It's 5 p.m. but not quite rush hour in Tokyo as we board a train for the 40-minute ride for an evening with Naoko Ogawa and her family.
"Turn right at the ticket gates," she instructed me on WhatsAp. "There is a lift. Take it down to the ground floor and wait in front of the FamilyMart."
Naoko picks us up in her Suzuki for the 15-minute ride to her home in a rural area surrounded by farms and rice paddies.
Her mother, Namiko, greets us in the driveway. She speaks no English but we immediately connect when she laughs and smiles at my attempts to say "Hello. Nice to meet you," in Japanese. We step inside, take our shoes off and immediately get started on the evening's task: Learning to make Nori Maki (sushi rolls) for a feast that would unfold over the next few hours.
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| Rolling Nori Maki with toasted seaweed and a bamboo mat |
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| Naoko and her mother, Namiko, show off platter of sushi, Nori Maki and tempura |
Japan is a country where it helps to know people who can explain all the things you see or want to try. But making connections can be challenging. The language barrier is significant and Japanese cultural norms call for people keeping to themselves.
Our goal during a recent trip, the first after 35 years, was to meet local people. Thanks to community volunteers anxious to practice their English and non-profit organizations, such as Nagomi Visit, which set up our dinner with the Ogawas, we succeeded everywhere we went.
We bookended a two-week stay with a few nights in Tokyo at the beginning and end of our trip, starting out with a walking tour and informal dinner out with two volunteer neighborhood guides, and ending with our dinner with the Ogawas.
Googling ways to connect with locals, I came across the website for the Koto City Volunteer English-Speaking Guide Association.
I knew nothing about Koto City, a suburb east of downtown Tokyo on the Sumida-gawa River, but the group's invitation to "Meet Local Guides, Share Most Heartwarming Tours" was intriguing.
The first step was to pick one of three tours offered, and list our preferred dates. The organization then paired us up with a volunteer who contacted me on e-mail and WhatsAp to make arrangements.
Our guide was Aki Fujimori who told me he had visited Seattle with his wife, and most recently had traveled to Colorado. He had fond memories of Seattle including landmarks such as the Pike Place Market and Space Needle, and loved the beef he found in Colorado.
Aki lived near our Airbnb in the Skytree area of Tokyo, so instead of making our own way to the meeting spot in Koto City, he suggested we meet him at a nearby subway stop and we ride together on the subway and bus to Koto City. Waiting for us there was Keiko Miyoshi, a retired government employee who volunteers with Aki.
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| Keiko shows us a map of her neighborhood |
Our destination was Sunamachi Ginza, a century-old shopping street not to be confused with the glitzy Tokyo Ginza district known for expensive, designer stores.
"It might not appear in your guidebook," the Koto City website warned. The area was a wetland until 400 years ago when landfill began and many Buddist temples, Shinto shrines and Samauri residences moved from downtown.
Sunamachi Ginza, lined with 180 shops selling everything from miso to fresh fish, household items and take-out food, preserves the atmosphere of an old shotengai, a traditional Japanese shopping street, where family-run shops meet the demands of people living nearby.
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| Mixing miso |
With Keiko and Aki, we stopped at shops selling tea and fresh fish and wandered into a supermarket and pachinko parlor, a Japanese arcade game similar to pinball. At a shop selling dozens of types of miso, the owner invited us to pick three, and mix them with tiny cups of broth to see which we liked best. There was a black smokey miso, a sweeter variety and and one that tasted like the familiar miso in soup served in Japanese restaurants in the U.S.
After our walk, Aki took us to the Fukagawa Edo Museum where is a volunteer docent. He then suggested that the four of us meet for dinner later night at a traditional isakaya, a Japanese bar that serves drinks and sharable snacks.
We arranged to meet up at a subway stop at 5 p.m. Keiko, Tom and I followed Aki down the street until we came to a small doorway, and walked down several steps into a cozy room filled with booths and long tables.
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| Dinner together at a local izakaya in Tokyo |
Sliding into a booth below a TV screen, we nibbled on small plates of jellyfish, sour plums, a Japanese omlete and chicken and pork skewers. Beer and saki kept the conversation flowing as we had fun comparing Japanese and American traditions, and teaching each other new English and Japanese words.It was just our second day in Tokyo, and here we were sharing a meal with two new local friends in an isakaya we could have never found on our own. Could we get much luckier than this?
Kanazawa
Our next stop was Kanazawa, three hours away from Tokyo by bullet train, where we had arranged through the Kanazawa Goodwill Guide Network to spend our first morning with Keiko Ureno, 62, a part-time special education teacher who taught herself English by listening to the radio.
Kanazawa owes its roots in traditional culture and the arts to the Maeda clan which took over the Kanazawa Castle in 1583 During the Edo Period (1603 to 1868) when the military Shogun and Samurai soldiers ruled Japan, the family avoided being seen as a political threat by using its wealth to support cultural and artistic endeavers.
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| The 440-year-old Kanazawa castle |
Keiko met us at our hotel around the corner from the Omicho public market at 10 a.m. We boarded a bus to Higashi Chaya, one of three 200-year-old geisha districts in Kanazawa where female entertainers hosted wealthy men.
A geisha house is characterized by wooden lattice screens on the first floor and guest rooms on the second. A few geishas still live in Higashi Chaya, but most of the former dwellings now house shops, cafes and restaurants.
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| Restored Geisha houses in Hagashi Chaya |
Master artisans from around the country came to Kanazawa to work as the city gained a reputation of producing traditional crafts. The most famous is gold leaf, which is added to many handicrafts such as wood, ceramics. Kanazawa artisans make virtually all the gold leaf produced in Japan. A popular dessert is ice cream coated with a sheet of gold leaf.
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| Gold leaf ice cream |
"It has no taste. It has no smell. It has no nutrition," Keiko told us. At around $6 a cone, it's a splurge, but something almost every visitor tries.
More traditional is Matcha tea and the seasonal sweets served with it. While green tea is leaf tea, Matcha is the powder of green tea produced from specially-grown buds shielded from the sun before it is picked.
With Keiko, we stopped at a shop that invites visitors to relax at low tables and mix their own Matcha by dissolving the powder in a bowl of hot water and whipping it into a froth with a wire tea whisk.
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| Former Geisha house now a tea shop |
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| Using a wire whisk to mix matcha and hot water |
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| Enjoying our tea and sweets with Keiko |
Together we shared tea and some sweets - a Matcha-flavored cake and some jelly-like cubes - and exchanged gifts.
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| Keiko shows off her calligraphy |
Keiko does calligraphy, a Japanese style of decorative handwriting done with a brush and pen. Her gift to us were small strips of paper with our names written in Japanese and a card about "Once in a lifetime encounters," perhaps like the one we were having with her.
"It's invaluable," the card said. "Cherish it."
Nagano
We originally planned a stop in Nagano, an hour's train ride from Kanazawa, as a way station, a place to check into a nice hotel and position ourselves to catch a 6 a.m. train to begin a hike in the Kiso Valley along a path the Samauri soldiers once walked between Kyoto and Tokyo.
Nagano was the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics. It is surrounded by the Japanese Alps. Apart from scenery and the Buddhist Zenko-ji Temple, one of Japan's most important pilgrimage sites, sightseeing is limited. But Nagano ended up being one of our favorite stops.
Part of the charm was the $115 a night room we scored on Booking.com at the five-star Chateraise Hotel. The Chateraise is owned by a Japanese confectionary company which carries out a sweet theme at the hotel with lobby decorations in the shape of giant slices of strawberry shortcake; a free afternoon dessert bar; and 34 kinds of ice cream bars available free in the lobby 24-7.
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| Sweet sculptures at the Chateraise Hotel |
With Miyuki Todoroki, a retired kindergarten teacher and volunteer Nagano Goodwill guide, we learned about the city as we walked with her to the temple along a road dotted with shrines and small shops. We learned that Nagono is known for its soba noodles made from buckwheat which grows well in the mountain climate. She recommend one of the restaurants in a food court above the train station for a soba noodle dinner. We took her advice, and for about $12 each, we had one of the best meals of the trip.
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| Miyuki, a volunteer guide who said she had been to the U.S. only once, 20 years ago to run in a marathon |
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| Rolling dough made from buckwheat flour to create soba noodles |
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| Soba noddles paired with tempura |
Our walk with Miyuki was on a Sunday, and the streets and temple were crowded with tourists. We decided to go back the next day on our own to take our time exploring its mysteries. Among them was a descent underground into the Okaidan Meguri, a completely dark passage under the main altar. Here where visitors inch along in the dark with their right hand pressed against a wall until it touches the "key to paradise," a metal handle believed to lead to spiritual salvation.
Miyuki told us about a holiday called Sinchi-Go-San, which honors children ages 3,5 and 7. Kids and their parents dress in traditional garb and go to the temples for special blessings. We saw several families the next day when we returned, including this mother and her daughter. Thanks to our time with Miyuki, we were able to converse with them about the holiday and ask to take their picture.
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Back to Tokyo
Back in Tokyo, we were looking forward to spending our last night with the Ogawa family which has been hosting foreign visitors for 12 years.
Arranging the visit was as easy as applying on the organizaton's website a few weeks in advance of our trip, then waiting to see who might respond.
Naoko answered quickly. We accepted and used a credit card to pay $35 per person to defray the cost of food and keeping the non-profit organization running. Then we exchanged pictures and a little about each other.
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| Tom learning to make sushi with Naoko |
Naoko and her husband, Ryuji, both in their 50s, are part-owners in a vineyard near their home. He works for a steel company. She works part-time preparing lunches for kindergarten students. Their two sons, Mashio and Natsuo are in college. Her mother, Namiko, lives with them, tends to a vegetable garden and helps with the dinners.
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| Namiko slices the Nori Maki |
Naoko had asked me if we would like to help cook. I said yes, and when we arrived, she had set up all the makings for preparing Nori Maki, We followed her lead by placing a sheet of toasted seaweed on a bamboo mat, then covering it with rice before adding slices of egg, cheese, cucumbers and crab sashimi. Namiko then cut the rolls into bite-size rounds with a sharp knife dipped in vinegar.
We also made sushi, learning how to make the rice stick to slices of fresh tuna, salmon, snapper and skate by squeezing it in our hands. Naoko and her mother made tempura with fresh okra, broccoli, shiitake mushrooms, pumpkin, lotus, carrots and bell peppers.
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| Hand-rolled Nori Maki and fresh sushi |
We sat in the dining room simply furnished with tatami mats, a Japanese screen, a small alter and a round table while we passed around the platters, and talked about life in Seattle, the Japanese star players from the Seattle Mariners baseball team, and what we had seen so far in Japan. Namiko kept up her end of the conversation by speaking to us directly in Japanese while Naoko interpreted.
Over green tea and muscat grapes, we exchanged gifts. A ceramic spoon rest showing the Seattle skyline from us; a wall hanging for us commemorating the year of the horse in 2026.
As we gallop into the new year, we will look back on our evening with Naoko and her family as a treasured memory.
