This trip is proving to be great for my waistline. All the destinations have allowed me to lose weight with the exception of Cape Town with its combination of fattening meals and transportation by car. In Santiago we walked everywhere. In India, intestinal disorders kept me from absorbing any nutrition. Kyoto is proving beneficial on two counts: we walk all over town and the food is simply unaffordable so I can’t eat. It is well known that Japanese restaurants have plastic replicas outside of the food they serve inside. What is less well known is that with current exchange rates they could replace the plastic replicas with solid gold replicas and it would still be cheaper than what they serve inside. All overweight Americans should buy a discount ticket to Kyoto and watch the pounds melt away since they can’t afford to buy the food. I should market the Kyoto Diet as the next big thing when the fad of the Atkins Diet has faded.

Catherine and I knew we would have an expectations problem with the kids concerning Japanese food. They love the Teppanyaki style food served at Benihana’s in the U.S. so they thought Japan would be great – Benihana’s every night. They were in for a rude awakening as we tried to introduce them to raw fish, pickled vegetables and the other real staples of the Japanese diet that Catherine and I both love. Fortunately, Sophie and Valerie at least like the bowls of noodles that are also popular, but at $6 for a bowl, I let them eat and then go up in the hills outside town and forage for mushrooms for myself.

Supermarket prices are not that unreasonable, but preparing a meal in a hotel room without a kitchen can be difficult - unless one is married to Catherine Petroff. One of things I love most about Catherine is her ingenuity. Small inconveniences like not having a kitchen or the hotel not allowing hot plates do not deter her. After obtaining Yakitori chicken from the supermarket, she simply took out our travel iron, turned it upside down, added a layer of aluminum foil and proceeded to heat up the chicken on the iron! The iron's steam function ensured the meat didn't dry out.

After several days we treated the children to Teppanyaki food, but it was a very different experience from what they were used to. At Benihana’s the diminutive shrimp come out already shelled and are then cut-up with a stylish flourish. Here, very large, very much alive prawns are presented to you and immediately placed on a hot grill 6 inches from your plate. While Perry the Prawn was writhing in his death throes on the grill, Sophie’s and Valerie’s jaws dropped to the counter. I was hoping that this experience might convert them to vegetarianism since fruit and vegetable prices are more reasonable, but no such luck. James ordered his usual steak (India was tough on him) but was disappointed with the very fine, but very small piece of meat that was brought out. I’ve seen Swedish meatballs that were larger. When the bill arrived, I wished I could trade places with Perry the Prawn – it was three times the cost of a Benihana’s meal and those aren’t cheap to begin with.

As a result of the limitations of our non-Japanese ATM cards we have frequently been running short of cash. The other night we tried an Italian restaurant and were first directed upstairs where the prices were higher but the fare looked outstanding. Alex wanted pizza, though, and that was only to be had in the café downstairs so we headed there. This proved to be fortunate because after dinner we found the restaurant did not take credit cards and we had to combine our pocket change together to find enough cash to pay the bill. One more Coke or, heaven forbid, ordering from the menu prices upstairs and we would have been washing chopsticks. We ended up walking home 2 kilometers back to the hotel since we had nothing left for a taxi!