Ja[pan day 3

April 3 - We met John’s friends, Tai and Kazue, their son and his wife and their two children for lunch today. As soon as I shook Kazue’s hand, she gave me a huge smile and presented me with an enormous carrier bag full of the most beautiful Japanese fabrics - lots of silk and gorgeous patterns. She knows I quilt! They took us to a beautiful hotel close to where we are staying where there was an amazing buffet - absolutely everything you can imagine - Japanese, Chinese, salad, roast beef, pizza - including tuna fish head (no, I didn’t!). It was a lovely sunny day after the wind and rain of yesterday and we had our coffee outside on the patio. Tai absolutely insisted on accompanying us sightseeing in the afternoon and he very kindly took us to Ueno where I had heard there is a beautiful garden and lots of cherry trees. I was right on both counts, but hadn’t taken into consideration that it’s Saturday so most people were not at work - and remember the cherry blossom parties I wrote about yesterday? - well, we witnessed them in all their glory. Actually it was all rather weird - there were literally thousands of people all having picnics under the trees. It was all extremely organized - each party had a cordoned off area and the gawkers (us) could walk down a long boulevard with these amazing cherry trees on each side with all these people eating, drinking, playing cards and generally just having a party on the ground underneath them! Those who couldn’t get a spot under the trees were camped out anywhere they could find a square inch to set their sheet on. It was quite the most extraordinary sight I’ve ever seen. Tai then took us to the Ginza which is the main, swish shopping area - Gucci, Armani, Dior etc. etc. etc. Since I’m not a shopper, it was interesting from a people-watching perspective! We dropped Tai off at his subway stop and then wandered some more. Hartley was fascinated with the Sony store which had all the latest gadgets e.g. 360 degree TV. All that wandering was getting to my knees (John’s seem to be fine) so we came back to the hotel for a “nanny nap” and then returned to the Ginza for supper (the trains are really easy once you get them figured out - all the stations are numbered and there are even really helpful station people who can rescue you if you look lost!) John had really wanted me to see al the lights at the Ginza at night and it really was quite a sight - something like Piccadilly Circus. We had no idea where to eat so we chose a hole in the wall that looked promising and it turned out to lead downstairs into quite a large, very traditional Japanese restaurant. The young waiter spoke a tiny bit of English and as the menu was all in Japanese, it was interesting trying to order. We ended up with potato salad (not sure what happened to the translation there!), really good bowls of noodles with all kinds of stuff in them, some amazing sushi and Japanese beer - total bill about $35 Canadian. So we got really lucky.