The First of Many!

Wowsers…been a long time!! for those of you that don’t know – i no longer have internet at my apartment so it’s kind of tough for me to update regularly. and i’ve been really busy with trips, decisions, and of course work and beer and regular life too!! so i have a bajillion pictures and stories to add – hopefully i’ll get through a good bit of it today. but i’m planning on breaking the posts into smaller chunks that are easier to swallow (and write). ;-)

FIRST: my lovely momma and grandmomma came to visit me!! it feels like it was a long time ago, but it was really only about a month ago.. i must be getting old – time is moving quickly and my memory fails me about 6 seconds after it’s over…

they arrived on march 21st at the nagoya centrair airport. my wonderful friend fumie was incredibly kind and drove me to the airport to pick them up. we spent our first full day just running around locally in nagoya. we went to nagoya castle and climbed a million flights of stairs all the way to the top!!

After the castle we hung around the sakae area of nagoya – lots of shops and tall buildings. we went to Tokyu Hands – a giant department store that has all kinds of goodies. costumes, toys, home furnishings, decorations, paper goods of a million billion different kinds, and on and on. Wikipedia article on Tokyu Hands and the official website in japanese of course!!

Then we moved on to Loft which is kind of like Tokyu Hands but maybe more housewares oriented? Their official website…. We found lots of goodies at both of them!! After walking and walking and going up and down far too many staircases (in and out of the subways) we headed back to Nisshin.

We went home and met up with Kerry (also nova teacher, now ex-roommate) and went to our favorite favorite restaurant ENYA!!!! We love enya….especially for their $1 mugs of beer…. (see earlier posts for more pics & descriptions) we even convinced mom to try some tasty salmon sashimi. She said it wasn’t too bad… proof:

We ended up going to bed at a rather decent hour… as the next day we were heading to Osaka BRIGHT and early!!! so we packed up our bags and turned in. :-)