Laohu! Laohu! Laohu!

 

Happy New Year! 新年快樂! Today is the first day of the Lunar New Year 春節, and thus the first day of the Year of the Tiger 虎年. Despite that coffee mug proclaiming 2022 as the Tiger's year (purchased at the same time as that book on Feng Shui 風水), the Chinese zodiac signs don't correspond with the standard Western calendar. What this means in practice is that if your birthday has already come and gone this year, you might still actually be an Ox 丑 and not a Tiger 寅. My daughter is an example of this. According to that aforementioned coffee mug, she should be a Dog 戌. However, going by the Lunar calendar (i.e. the one that actually matters in this case), Amber entered this world in the last days of the Year of the Rooster 酉, making her...fowl.

To spare you the math involved, this also means Amber is now a Sweet Sixteen. We celebrated the milestone by going to a local Japanese restaurant as our daughter had a yen (rimshot) for some udon noodles うどん:

Afterward we returned home for her matcha 抹茶 birthday cake and, of course, her presents:

As if turning sixteen wasn't momentous enough, Amber also recently received her learner's permit and has been learning how to drive under the watchful gazes of her mother and father. Unfortunately, due to a combination of Virginia's stringent requirements and our scheduled departure for China sometime this summer, it's unlikely she'll be able to move up to her first driver's license before we go to Beijing 北京. But at least she'll have some experience behind the wheel for when that time comes to take the driving test. She's already better at parking than her dad (which, admittedly, isn't saying a whole lot).

This first blog post of the new year serves as a compendium of photos from the final weeks of 牛年. Saturday, January 8 we visited this Chinese/Taiwanese restaurant in Fairfax for its pre-opening "trial run", an event my wife learned of through one of those mysterious underground Taiwanese networks in which she's enmeshed:

Shu-E had to order the stinky tofu 臭豆腐, but I couldn't really complain as I've been known to mix nattō 納豆 with my rice, much to my family's disgust:

Odiferous soy products aside, the food wasn't bad and despite a few kinks, it appeared the restaurant had a promising future. According to my wife, however, the owners have since had a falling out, and the Taiwanese side has yet to find a new location:

Saturday, January 15 the three of us visited Brookside Gardens, a 50-acre (20.2 hectares) public space in Wheaton, Maryland:

The last time I was in Japan was on New Year's Day (the Western one), 2018, so I was drawn to the Japanese Style Garden:

Signs giving Zen advice were all around:

The temperature that day was a brisk 23°F/-5°C, and the surfaces of all the bodies of water in the garden were frozen over. That only encouraged Amber to try to crack the ice, resulting in a sore foot by the end of our visit. Served her right:

Trying not to slip. I've been leery of treading on ice after a couple of bad falls in Lithuania:

Yet another reminder that we were supposed to have traveled to Japan in the summer of 2020 on what would've been a funtastic trip:

The ice in places was actually thick enough to support Amber's weight (with Mom there to provide assistance). Painfully aware of my own current heftiness, I declined giving it a try myself:

A memorial to the victims of the 2002 D.C. sniper attacks:

The greenhouse was a welcome respite from the chill:

Kimono 着物 on sale at the garden's gift shop:

The day's Japanese theme continued with lunch at Ren's Ramen in Silver Spring, where I had the "Sapporo-style" 味噌ラーメン. I'm still holding out hope that we can visit Tōkyō 東京 this summer on the way to China's capital, but the swath being created by the Omicron variant (and god knows what else is in the pipeline) will no doubt result in yet another leisure travel postponement:

Bob Ross ensures safe driving and pleasant odors while in our Honda Accord:

Wegman's in Tysons, Virginia. Think Whole Foods, but also selling unpretentious (read normal) foods  and at generally lower prices, but still attracting those white suburbanites who buy books on Feng Shui and think we're 31 days into the Year of the Tiger. We passed on the $160 A5 Wagyū 和牛 beef, but did indulge in the relatively cheaper meatballs:

The way our apartment is angled we don't see too many sunsets. A rare view:

The shops at Eden Center prepare for the upcoming new year. It's because of the importance of the holiday in Korean and Vietnamese cultures that I don't use the term "Chinese New Year". That, and the opportunity to rile Chinese nationalists being too good to pass up:

Creepy sounding wind chimes in the cemetery on a cold winter morning:

Thursday, January 20 Amber had an unexpected day off from school due to an approaching snow storm. No snow day for her old man as I'm considered a teleworker, and thus my work isn't affected by the weather. As you can see from this photo, the snow snubbed our area, much to my daughter's delight:

Friday, January 21 another day without snow. According to my phone's weather app the temperature as I went out for my morning walk was 18°F/-6°C, but with a wind chill that made it feel like 3°F/-16°C. I could believe it:

Even the dog bowl is frozen over:

Sunday, January 23 was much warmer at 36°F/2°C, so to take advantage of the good weather I forced asked the girl to drive the two of us to Lake Needwood, a 75-acre reservoir that is part of Rock Creek Regional Park in Derwood, Maryland (Shu-E opted to stay in bed). The air may have been warmer, but the lake was still almost completely iced over:

It's difficult to see, but a lone goose waddles across the ice:

Just as she did at Brookside Gardens, my daughter continued her experiments in ice breaking:

Trudging down a muddy slope:

Not a woodpecker, but searching for something to eat:

Afterward, Amber drove us to Rockville Town Square:

Following lunch at a Lebanese café, we went next door to Kyoto Matcha Cafe for dessert:

The shop may be called Kyoto Matcha Dessert, but the kanji 漢字 reads "Matsugami Chaya" 松上茶屋 and "Matsugami no Cha" 松上の茶. According to a Japanese friend who looked it up online, the name is a made-up tea brand by a Chinese company. All those poor foodies thinking they were having an "authentic" Japanese tea break:

An Art Deco-ish looking condo complex in Rockville. The wife has mentioned the city (known in some quarters as Little Taipei) as a place where we could buy a house, but I've been balking as prices only continue to rise up to ridiculous heights in the D.C. metro area:

A sign o' the times at the Maruichi Japanese Grocery in Rockville:

Friday, January 28 preparations for an early New Year's Eve 除夕 family dinner:

The reason for the earlier repast (Chúxī fell on January 31 this year) was due to our daughter's school weekend band trip to Disney World. Snow fell on the evening of the 28th and the early morning of the 29th...:

…but not in sufficient volume to prevent me from having to drop off Amber at her school at the ungodly hour of 0400:

With the girl safely off toward warmer climes, I went out for a long pre-dawn walk in the snow. The deliberately unflattering self-portrait reflects the fact it was 21°F/-6°C but felt like 10°F/-12°C. But it could've been a lot, lot worse, as this most recent storm saved its wrath for areas to the north, south and east of here:

Sunday, January 30, with the girl in Florida, the missus and I walked to Eden Center to see a New Year's lion dance 舞獅. We saw the performance taking place at the far end of the parking lot, but Shu-E assumed the dancers would eventually make their way to where we were standing, so we stayed put. They never did, so instead we ended up having lunch inside Vivi Bubble Tea. My wife noticed the signs on the window for businesses coming soon, but if our history is any guide, we'll be gone before that happens:

Eden Center is invariably a busy place on weekends, but even more so when special events are being held. It's times like these that I'm glad we live within walking distance, even when the temperatures remain below freezing:

My footprints in the snow, and the sad realization that this is how I actually walk. Shu-E said there's a word in Mandarin for this, wàibāzìjiǎo 外八字腳, meaning "splayed feet" (the opposite is nèibāzìjiǎo 內八字腳, meaning "pigeon toes"). She also helpfully pointed out the impressions I leave on the ground are "不好看". Marriage...:

Opposite sides of the same crypt. There are several graves of children in the nearby cemetery, but this one is particularly poignant as there is often a toy truck placed in front of it. And while I have no reason to doubt Ms. McClelland was a good person who deserved to live as long as she did, could someone please explain how God's plans for all of us entail allowing one person to live more than a century, while taking away a couple's child after less than a month on this planet?:

And on this first day of the new year, the wife and I returned to Eden Center around noon, where the festivities began with the raising of the American and South Vietnamese flags (the latter accompanied by what I presume to be the old RVN anthem):

A couple of years ago a friend who was learning Vietnamese in preparation for an assignment in Hanoi went to Eden Center hoping to find some people with whom he could practice speaking the language. Instead, he encountered a lot of hostility due to the fact he was being taught the northern dialect. Old grudges never die, nor do they fade away, at least in some cases:

A reporter from Voice of America is doing a story, while in the background a pair of attractive young women pose in their Lunar New Year finery:

A rare shot of Shu-E. Getting another crack at seeing a lion dance performance was the real reason we went to Eden Center again today (that, and the opportunity for me to buy a 奶茶 to go with my lunch):

Success, as this video taken by my wife proves. Except that the firecrackers were so loud they drowned out the music accompanying the dancers:

For this family, the Year of the Tiger will mean yet another overseas move in uncertain political and epidemiological climates. For me personally, my goals are to make progress learning Mandarin while avoiding any further hospital stays. For all of you, may you have a prosperous New Year! 恭喜發財!

(For further reporting on the festivities, check out this, this and this)

POSTSCRIPT: Amber returned home on Tuesday night from Orlando, and it sounds like she had a great time at Disney World. Here's a photo of her (in front in the red hoodie) with other members of the school band, taken last week before they departed for Florida. Note the mouse ears:

And these are the souvenirs she brought back for me from EPCOT (she bought some incense for her mother, including one that conjures up aromas of a Taoist temple):

Mickey Mouse started out being a much edgier rodent:

Let it 下雪, let it 雪を降る, let it snow!

 

Snow. Growing up in California, it wasn't something I had a lot of experience with. Temperatures in Sacramento during winter could get low enough on infrequent occasions to freeze the surface of our swimming pool, and dense fog was the norm throughout the season, but it never snowed during the time I lived there. Snow was something I would see far off in the distance (my parents had a great view of the Sierra Nevada mountains from their bedroom window), or on the roofs of cars returning from weekend ski trips in the Lake Tahoe area, but my adolescence during the winter months wasn't filled with making snow angels or snowmen, nor having snowball fights with friends. 

My first direct experience with falling snow didn't come until I moved to Tōkyō 東京 in my late twenties. It didn't snow very often there, nor was the snowfall very heavy (though it was enough at times to paralyze the city. On one memorable occasion, just 20 centimeters/8 inches was enough to bring the capital to a halt. It took my then-wife nine hours to get home by bus from her job in Shibuya 渋谷 to our home in Komae 狛江, a trip which usually was only a half-hour at most, while a colleague of mine had to spend the night on a train car when snow on the tracks brought the line to a halt). But what snow did fall from time to time was for me magical. When the yuki began futteimasu, I would rush outdoors, cold be damned, to take it all in. I was particularly enthralled with the sight of Buddhist temples covered in the white stuff, especially at night. 

As the years went on, my experiences with snow would gather momentum, like a cartoon snowball. On one memorable trip, Shu-E and I spent the Lunar New Year holiday in snow-covered Takayama 高山. The highlight of our visit was a day trip to see the historic gasshō-zukuri 合掌造り houses in the village of Shirakawa-gō 白川郷, on a day when the temperature hovered around the -9°C/16°F mark. At one point we trudged through the snow to a lookout spot, where the view was picture-postcard perfect. The photographs I took of the scene are in an album along with the rest of our household effects in a warehouse in Antwerp, Belgium (I hope), waiting for us to relocate to Beijing 北京 later this year. But the scene looked much like this:

https://www.japan.travel/snow/en/snow-travel/culture-and-history/shirakawa-go/

But despite moments like trying to smoke a Mild Seven while shivering on an outdoor porch in -10°C/14°F temperatures in Matsumoto 松本, it wasn't until we lived in Lithuania that I paid my winter dues. It was there that I learned how to dress for winter, how to drive in the snow (snow tires are mandatory in Lithuania November-March) and how to tread on ice. Well, kind of, as I did slip and fall several times, banging up my elbow on one occasion, but I blame some of this on the fact I had to walk up and down a steep hill every day, as well as on Vilnius' poor Soviet-era drainage. I remember driving my daughter to her Saturday morning swimming class on a day when the temperature was -24°C/-11°F, or going for a long walk outside when it was -19°C/-2°F. It wasn't just cold and icy, as the sun rarely made an appearance during the winter months. But despite being advised by the chief medical officer at the embassy to go somewhere warm and sunny during our winter vacations, we chose instead to visit Finland in February, arriving in Helsinki during a snowstorm, and traveling up to the Arctic Circle to chase the northern lights when it was -20°C/-4°F (see here and here). And none of us minded the weather, never using the "happy lamps" the embassy provided for our housing.

The Baltics may have trained me (as a friend puts it), but two winters in Ethiopia turned me into a wimp again, weather wise. Fortunately, our return to the Washington, D.C. area has coincided (intentionally?) with the most winter-like weather the DMV has seen since the last time we were here. Starting in the late evening of January 2, and continuing throughout the morning of the 3rd, roughly 7 inches/18 centimeters of snow fell in our area (I measured with a ruler the snowpack that had accumulated on the top of our car). It may not sound like much to those from much snowier climes, but more snow fell on the 2nd-3rd in the D.C. area than during the previous two winters combined (it also led to motorists being stranded for hours on Interstate 95):

There aren't any Buddhist temples where I could try to recapture that Japanese winter magic within walking distance of where I live, but the nearby cemetery proved to be suitably atmospheric as I went for a walk that morning:

Our Honda:

My daughter had a snow day off from school. Unfortunately, as I've been doing my training virtually since early July, I still had Chinese classes online as usual. So I put Amber to work clearing the car. It was much easier on this occasion when compared to the last time we were in Falls Church, when we had to dig out from nearly two feet (60 centimeters) of snow:

Afterward we went to Eden Center for a post-snow removal bubble tea:

The following day I went out in the morning to survey the aftermath:

Sub-freezing temperatures meant there was a lot of ice on the ground, the reason why my daughter was still asleep in her heated bedroom while I was outside in the morning chill (her school started two hours late on Tuesday):

Some tree limbs couldn't handle the weight of the snowpack:

We had our second snowfall of the season on Thursday the 6th/Friday the 7th. It was roughly half that of Monday's accumulation (around 3 inches/8 centimeters), but still enough to give the girl her second day off from school that week. I, on the other hand, still had class: 

Amber went out again to clear away the snow from the car, and afterward built this tiny snowman, which she placed on a hedge behind the Honda. But from the way she framed the photo, you would've thought she had built a human-sized figure somewhere in the mountains:

Though I haven't seen any recently, I have noticed a lot of deer tracks in the snow:

Our most recent dusting came yesterday afternoon, after lunch. Just after the flakes began falling, I went outside to have a closer look:

A snowplow parked by a Masonic temple, waiting for the call:

By the time I reached the point on the W&OD Trail where I usually turn around and head back home, my footprints were already disappearing under the snow. According to my phone it was 23°F/-5°C, but was feeling more like 12°F/-11°C:

I wasn't the only one out and about. There were people walking their dogs, as well as joggers and a couple of cyclists who passed by me:

Most people appeared to have heeded the call to stay off the roads on Sunday afternoon:

There was a time when Amber would've been excited to go outside and play in the snow, but on the verge of turning sixteen, she now has a different outlook:

Nonetheless, I forced to go out after dinner, but she wisely wore her mother's winter jacket. According to the ruler we took with us, there was only about an inch (around 2.5 centimeters) of snow on top of the car this time, much to my daughter's relief:

 

And that's how winter has been going two weeks or so into the new year (and quite a change from the warm weather we had enjoyed on our recent trip to Charleston, South Carolina late last month). Though the snowfall hasn't reached Snowmageddon levels, the low temperatures have prevented the accumulation from completely melting away. In fact, the D.C. area had it's coldest day in three years on the 11th, when the brutal wind chill made it feel far colder than the 21°F/-6C my phone app was reading (and, yes, I went outside for my usual morning walk that day). 

Back when I lived in Japan, I used to laugh at the obsession some Japanese appeared to have with the idea that theirs was the only country to have four distinct seasons. Living in Taiwan, however, where 10°C/50°F is a "cold front" and some people bundle up as if they were standing on the Siberian tundra in early January, started me thinking that four seasons was something to be appreciated. The climate in the Washington, D.C. area is similar in many ways to that experienced in much of Japan - warm springs (with Washington also being famous for cherry blossoms 桜!); hot, humid summers; and autumns ablaze with fall colors. And cold, sometimes snowy winters. It might not be Hokkaidō 北海道, or Niigata 新潟, or Minnesota, or Ontario, but for this native Californian it's a winter wonderland to be enjoyed, even if I don't get the day off from work. 

And provided the heat stays on...

Although the video doesn't feature any snow, listening to this track on earphones while walking through our local frozen wasteland seemed very apropos: