Tokyo, Part 2

Obaasan's house in Tokyo doesn't have a guestroom, so I got to sleep on the tatami-covered floor in the wa-shitsu (Japanese room), where I woke up to light filtering through the shoji (sliding paper screen).
Modern Japanese homes are predominantly Western in style and construction, however traditional style is maintained in one part, the wa-shitsu (Japanese room). You slide a shoji aside to enter, sit on the tatami-covered floor, and admire the display of shodo and ikebana in the tokonoma (alcove).

It was Shubun no hi (Autumn Equinox Day), another national holiday, so my cousin Taku was able to spend the morning with me. He works for Nippon Cargo Airlines and his job takes him to exotic places like Singapore, Thailand, Istanbul, Milan and New Caledonia.

Taku is the only relative I can talk to about the Internet. (Computer literacy in Japan is lower than you'd think, but improving slightly of late.) He made a homepage for his mandolin club, and regularly surfs sites and reads up on what is hot. He told me about a popular Eki Soba Page, which rates the quality of buckwheat noodle soup at restaurants in or near train stations in Tokyo and beyond. There is a picture of the reviewer on the front page (Hey, he looks familiar ...).

"Koibito sagashi-chu (Looking for girlfriends)."

We went to Shinjuku and tried out a Puri-kura ("PURInto KURAbu" - Print Club) booth. For the past couple of years, Puri-kura has been what Japanese business circles term a dai-hitto (smash hit) among school kids and young women. For a few hundred yen, you can get a sheet of 16 little stickers with a picture of yourself and the foreground of your choice. This has spawned a mini-industry for products like sticker albums and key fobs, brooches, bracelets and pendants with a space to put stickers.

How to take a Puri-kura picture

I had a nice lunch with Yukiko, who had spent almost a year in Toronto studying English. She recently started a job as an English teacher in Saitama-ken, and recounted amusing anecdotes about the adjustment of a young Saskatchewan man who had just arrived from Canada to join the staff at her school (One was the toire (TOIREtto = toilet) slipper tale again - some gaijin stories never go away!).

We were having such fun that I lost track of time and nearly missed my shuttle train to Narita. On past trips to Japan, I sometimes haven't been able to wait to go back to Canada. Was my subconscious telling me something?

Local Food Miso-nikomi udon - udon noodles in a hot pot with a miso-based soup. (It's really from Nagoya, not Tokyo. Yukiko's boyfriend is from Nagoya and he was feeling cold and homesick that rainy day!)