News from the Rice Paddy: お母さんが来ました！

So this month began with a WONDERFUL visit from my WONDERFUL mom. For two weeks we had a girl’s day out, enjoying Japan city to country, mountain to ocean, rain to snow to sun. We first met in rainy Tokyo, meeting up with my cousins and his adorable children. Next to Katashina, where we stayed at my friend’s pension in the mountains and ate amazing food including pizza from his homemade brick oven. Mom came to school for a day, met my kids, played some games, and was taught about Japanese culture. They kids loved her (“mother very cute!”), the teachers thought she was very stylish (they are used to my wrinkled pants and sweatshirt outfits) and she even got a handful of gifts (origami, sembei, onigiris!) on her way out! Also in Katashina we had dinner with my organic farmer friends. We made fresh udon and tried a little bit of every vegetable found in Katashina. The next leg of the trip took us to Shikoku, the 4th largest and most rural island of Japan. Yes, you are probably wondering why I decided to take a vacation from my rural-ness to more rural-ness but it’s been on my list of places to check out so, I went. And it was AMAZING. The people were wonderful and laid back, the valley was absolutely breathtaking with lush greens and a clear blue river in the gully, and the roads.. well the roads were horrifying. One day, for over 6 hours, we drove along these roads barely a car-width thick. A car approaching from the other side meant pulling over to the rocky wall/drop into the forest and inching your way by. At one point both me and the other driver had to pull in our rearview mirrors so that we could pass each other without encountering a scraped up rental car / tumbling off a cliff. But we survived unscathed and actually relaxed after a trip to a beautiful hot spring. We also learned a little bit of the traditional dance, Awa Odori, ate famous udon, and pretty much wore through our sneakers from the amounts of walking we were doing. We returned through Kobe (missed out on the beef) back to Tokyo to stay with our good friends for the rest of the week. This week was packed with meals with friends and relatives, trips to Yokohama, Kamakura, and Asakusa and buying enough souvenirs to fill a separate bag. The week finished up, exhausted, getting on each other’s nerves a bit, but happy from such a swell trip. THANKS MOM!