Author: billkralovec

We are getting over jet lag (4-hour time difference) and travel fatigue and settling into our holiday in Japan. We are renting a home of a former colleague in the suburb of Ibabraki, the suburb next to our former home suburb of Minoh. We are on the outskirts of the Osaka metropolitan area and are surrounded by the hills and trees of the Minoh Hills National Park.

On our first full day in Japan, we visited our old house, which is now vacant and in dire need of TLC. We also visited former school, the Senri and Osaka International Schools of Kwansei Gakuin. I was impressed with the improvements to the campus that Kwansei Gakuin University has been doing, the place looks great. The kids are full of nostalgia and we did have a nice life in our beautiful neighborhood of Onohara Nishi. I loved going to our old Starbucks and Q’s Mall. Q’s Mall is an outdoor mall that is now at the end of the Senri Chuo Line. They are opening a subway station which started right before we left 4 and 1/2 years ago.

We watched Wonka, the musical by director Paul King. I loved it because the songs were great, it was old-fashioned in that it had the look and feel of the original 1971 movie that I loved as a kid and lots of great actors, costumes, and sets. I see the appeal of star Timothee Chalamet who starred in a young Willy Wonka. The story was a prequel to the 1971 original. I give it a “thumbs up”!

Winter skies in Japan are so blue and clear! The summer is hot, humid and hazy but winter is dry and cold usually.

We had a nice final day in Tashkent before traveling to Japan in the evening. I did a lot of yoga in the morning, went to school to close a few pending issues, and packed for the trip. The kids and Nadia were so excited to return to Osaka where we lived from 2014 – 2019. We have never returned to a place where we lived and waves of nostalgia came over our kids as we drove around our neighborhood.

The Tashkent airport was unusually calm with few people flying out. We flew Korean Air, the flag carrier of South Korea. They have 3 flights per week to Seoul and I highly recommend them. Koreans are much quieter and politer than Uzbeks when they are flying. It made for a pleasant night of travel. We made our 90-minute connection with no problems. Incheon Airport is one of my favorite airports, very comfortable with complimentary sleeping pods and plenty of male skin care products. 🙂 Korean is much more western and modern than Japan in my opinion.

Arriving at KIX (Kansai International Airport) brought back many memories. I used the toilets and forgot that the Japanese make the rest of the world look like barbarians when it comes to the bathroom experience. I need to install a Toto toilet seat in my house in the USA. Nothing better! We then took the “limousine bus” to the Hankyu Umeda Train Station in the center of Osaka. KIX is on an artficial island in southern Osaka Bay, a 70-minute bus ride from the center of Osaka. From their we took our old Kita Senri Hankyu train to the end of the line. From Kita Senri Station, we took a taxi to our friend’s home in Ibaraki, a far northern suburb of Osaka. It is adjacent to our former suburb of Minoh, so we are familar the area.

After getting settled in, we drove to our old house and school. We decided to eat at Nishiki Warai Restaurant that specializes in Kansai-style Okonomiyaki, a popular street food in Osaka. In English it is translated as “What you like” – “grilled”. It is basically a flour based dough mixed with yam and cabbage and then add pork, shrimp, octopus, squid, green onions, etc. It is known as “Osaka Soul Food” and the closest in our cuisine would be pizza. There is a hot griddle (teppan) in the middle of the table and the patrons finish cooking it. You can also put bonito flakes, Japanese mayonaise, a dark type of Worchester Sauce. Delicious!

It has been a relaxing few days since we ended school last Friday, December 13. I am on flexible working schedule this week and am spending more time with family. On the work side of my life, I am wrapping up personnel and facilities issues before the end of the calendar year. I also got a couple of basketball practices in with the girls varsity team. On the personal side, I am doing more fitness and exercise, blogging my trip to Tanzania, and preparing for our trip to Japan.

The snow has mostly melted in Tashkent as temperatures are now mostly above freezing. I need to wear my Japanese Heat Tech™ underwear to feel comfortable when temperatures are below zero Celsius. I heard that older people feel cold more because of decreased circulation. I don’t remember feeling this cold when I was younger. With the long underwear I am fine and I enjoy the cool weather of a Tashkent winter. I’ve been walking Obi more to get daily sunshine and went for a 5 kilometer run yesterday. I want to add cardio to my power yoga workouts over the 3-week Winter Break. When I return in January, I want to add weights as well. Listening to a Peter Attia interview, as one ages, especially after age 75, muscle mass decreases significantly. I want to have muscles to ensure an active lifestyle for next 20 years. After today, I will be 1/3 the way through my Power Yoga 108 which is truly life-changing experience for me as advertised.

The big news in our family is the return of our eldest son Owen. He is visiting us this month after completing the first semester of this third year in university. It is always nice to have our family whole again and I really miss having him around. We celebrated his 21st birthday last night by going out to Nadia’s favorite restaurant in Tashkent, “Cheese Factory” or Сыроварня. He is maturing into adult and we are all looking forward to reconnecting with him the month. He is suffering from jet lag but fought through dinner last night. Ocean and I are connecting over basketball. She is a really good athlete and I am slowly getting through to her regarding her use of fundamentals. I am quite positive over our team’s chances this year in the year-end tournaments. Oliver and I ran some errands the past couple of days for Nadia. She made a Venezuelan Christmas favorite, Pan de Jamón. It is baked bread with ham, cheese, olives, and raisins inside. I also take every opportunity to drive Oliver and Ocean to where they want to go.

My mouth is healing from a tooth extraction last Monday. The swelling is going down but I was not able to take out the stitches last night. I just need to not smile as I am missing two teeth on the left side of my mouth. I need to do some research about implants because I don’t think it should take this long. Sitting at dinner waiting for my family to arrive to the restaurant, I was so filled with joy when they walked in. I am so blessed to have such a beautiful and healthy family. I am trying to savor all of these special moments with my wife and children. Below are some scenes of Tashkent from my walks with Obi.

On our way back to the capital Dar Es Salaam and our flight home, we stopped at the historic port city of Bagamoyo. I was fascinated to read about the East African Slave Trade. As an American, I read a lot about the slaves from West Africa being shipped across the Atlantic to the USA. I didn’t know that almost 1.5 million slaves were captured in the interior (mostly Congo) and put to work on coastal plantations or shipped to India, China, Persia, and Arabia. You don’t see a large population of Africans in those countries today. I wonder why? In America, just under 400,000 slaves were sent to the American South and today African Americans make up around 10% of the total US population. Were they killed after slavery was abolished? Sent back to Africa? Worked to death?

We stopped at a former Catholic mission, Holy Ghost Mission, in Bagamoyo which is now a school and a museum. In the photo above, you can see Livingston Tower on the church. It is named in honor of the famous African explorer. His body was interred in the mission while waiting to be transported back to England. The Catholic missionaries helped freed slaves and brought development to the area. It was nice to read that the Muslim leader Sultan Majid, gifted the land to the French Catholics to build the church and convent.

It was sad to read that only about 20% of the slaves captured in the interior, survived the journey to the coast. What a tragedy! I can’t imagine the conditions and I guess it is easy to look back over 200 years ago and judge the cruelty of the slave traders. The museum also gave the history of German colonization of East Africa. The British took over the settlement after World War I. In 1916 British troops invaded and took the city from the Germans.

Today Bagamoyo seemed to be a sleepy small town. We stopped for dinner on the way out Fish Eagle Point and and lunch on the way back at a hotel owned by a French woman. I was trying to buy some souvenirs, but really nothing to buy. I laughed at the advertisement below of the hairstyles. I asked Ocean to get the “Ariana”.

We drove through the traffic of Dar Es Salaam on the way the airport. We drove right by the US Embassy and other embassies and stopped at a shopping mall to buy some Pili-Pili Sauce. It is a hot pepper sauce that I really like and I bought the regular and mango. Delicious! We also like Aramat, an MSG/Corn/Salt seasoning that makes everything taste good. Dar Es Salaam didn’t look particularly appealing, hot, lots of traffic, a bit chaotic and crowded. I sure it has its charms but we were not in the city long enough to enjoy them.

The Tanzanians I met were very friendly, loud and positive. Like many African nations, it is fast growing (4.39 children / female) with a demographics skewed towards young people. Tanzania was country #69 on my life list and my first visit to Africa. With a population of 62 million, it is the largest country entirely south of the equator. It is one of the most stable countries in Africa, with no major strife since its independence in 1964. The nature is amazing with the world’s deepest lake, mountains (Kilimanjaro), tropical coastline, forests and one of the biggest safari tourism industry (21 national parks) in Africa. They have presidential term limits of 2 x 5 years = 10 years. I was very interested in hearing people speak of their tribes. There are over 125 ethnic groups and over 100 languages Swahili is the national language . “My people are from the mountains.” one guy told me. I couldn’t tell the difference between the tribes, only the Maasai, who were much thinner, were distinctive. It is poor with 61% below the poverty line, but I see strong relationships, large familes and generally people have smiles on their faces. The country is 2/3 Christian and 1/3 Islam and I didn’t see or feel any strife between the two groups. I would definitely return to Tanzania and I would love to live there someday.

Tashkent received its first major snow of the winter on Monday evening! I was awake at 5:00 AM on Tuesday checking road conditions to make a call regarding school closure. We kept school open and I am glad we did. The students enjoyed playing in the snow and everyone made it to and from school safely. It is always interesting to hear from students experiencing snow for the first time in their lives. Snow brings out the kid in all of us and less snow on the planet is one of the sad consequences of global warming. Snow and cold always remind me of growing up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Combined with Christmas music, it brings back memories of my childhood in Caspian and my parents. I always miss them at this time of year. Temperatures stayed well below freezing all week and the local Amirsoy Ski Resort is opening on Saturday. Winter is in full swing!

Yesterday I got a tooth pulled. I discovered a large crack in the tooth and after x-rays, the dentist needed to take it out as the root was infected. He drilled the implant base into my jaw and sewed the incision. My mouth is swollen on the left side and I have a headache today. While he was taking out the tooth, the neighboring tooth cap fell out so I am missing two teeth this weekend. I go back Tuesday to put the cap back on and take out the stitches. I always think about what people did before anesthesia and modern dental tools. Pain, pain, pain…

I had a relaxing long weekend before we headed into the final week of school before Winter Break. Uzbekistan celebrated Constitution Day. On Saturday Ocean and I attended a beading workshop at school. A classmate of Ocean led a workshop on bracelet making for her Personal Project. Of course, Ocean’s bracelet was perfect and beautiful and mine was not so perfect and not so beautiful. It was fun to spend time with her and I was proud of my sense of accomplishment in making a bracelet for my wife Nadia. We all had a lot of laughs over it! I chose turquoise and orange, Miami Dolphin colors, which Nadia did not have any matching outfits for. She wore it anyway to be nice to me.

Tashkent received its first snow of the year on Friday night (December 8) the latest since I’ve lived here in 5 years. The snow hung on through the weekend but was only around in patches by Sunday evening. I hope we get more this week as it makes it feel more like Christmas.

Nadia hosted a Christmas Cookie Swap on Sunday evening. My highlight was going with my son Oliver and his girlfriend Nicole to buy Kirkland sharp cheddar cheese at Alay Bazaar. I took Obi out for several long walks over the three days to get outside and enjoy the city views. (above)

I had a quintessential Central Asian experience Thursday evening, courtesy of my friend Oybek. He took a group of us to a Kazakh restaurant to celebrate the start of the long weekend.

Beshbarmak is the national dish of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and is a traditional meal of the Central Asian nomadic steppe tribes. It is called “five fingers” because it was traditionally eaten without utensils. The dish is a combination of beef, horse and/or lamb meat wrapped in flat pasta noodles in a broth. I recently read a Genghis Khan biography and this was a meal of the Mongol armies. They were reliant on their animals while traveling and their diet was rich in meat and dairy products. Both the meat and dough are boiled. It is a heavy meal but delicious. The Kazakh nomadic tribes were probably similar to the Mongols. You can see Mongolian DNA in Kazakhs with their Asian eyes which differ from the Uzbek eyes, which are rounder and more Turkic.

To make the experience even better, the restaurant (Shilpildoq) was in a village about an hour out of Tashkent halfway between the villages of Parkent and Chirchiq. We also were served the traditional shorpo (mutton broth) and kumis, fermented mare’s milk. We reserved one of the yurts. It was a cold night and the wood stove made it cozy inside.

I was really curious about the fermented horse milk. It tasted better than I expected, slightly sour, and carbonated, but not an overwhelmingly bad taste as I was expecting. It is served cold and has an alcohol content of about 2% so it would take you quite a few drinks to become intoxicated. One of the guys Rashid said that it was a different kind of buzz, instead of vodka that goes to your head, getting drunk on kumis is more of a body buzz with a clear mind. I had two cups so I didn’t feel anything. Horse’s milk is high in lactose, closer to human milk than a cow’s. I remember drinking a bottle of Nadia’s milk when she was nursing and it was surprisingly sweet. The sugar is a good medium for fermentation to occur. I would drink it again, especially in the summer.

I was quite gassy Thursday night as my body is not used to so much meat. The pasta in broth was tasty and the meat was OK. Horse sausage was served with the meal and it was salty. It was a special evening for me. I love the friendship and camaraderie and felt honored that Oybek shared his ancestral culture with us.

It finally feels like winter is here after an unusually warm autumn. Temperatures are dipping down to 4C (39F) at night. Temperatures in the afternoon peak between 10-18 (50F-64F). The months of October and November in 2023 were fantastic and probably some of the warmest months experienced here. Below you can see temperatures were well above average for both highs and lows for the month of November in Tashkent. Tashkent has a Mediterranean climate with rain/snow falling mostly November to March. I am turning into my father, very interested in the weather…

Nadia and I attended a Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony hosted by the German Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Tilo Klinner. He has a beautiful residence and upon arrival, a full choir was singing in the atrium. His wife lit candle lights on the tree and he treated everyone to a delicious, Christmas dinner. I devoured the ham and scalloped potatoes. That is one of the perks of being a director of an international school is invitations to social events of the diplomatic community. Thank you Ambassador Klinner!

We had dinner at a colleaugue’s home last night which is the second of the New Year’s parties we attended. There are many more to come. Now all we need is snow. I hope to decorate our home this weekend.