Awake: 4:30am High thin clouds Overnight @ Nagoya, Japan
The breakfast coupon indicates the café opens @ 7:00am but when we arrive,
the place appeared to have been active for some time. Already Nick,
Melissa, Kevin & Matthew are eating. 25 min later, Katrina & Zack arrive.
One hr later, my brother, Don, & wife, Josie are here…. & later still, my
sisters, Corinne & Mary Jo. The gang is all here. We find out the café
opens @ 6:30am. We’ll count on that!
After a good breakfast of Japanese & Western food, & after listening to
all the details of other flight travel stories, Kathy & I take a walk to
the nearest large store: Daili. It doesn’t open until 10:00am so we walk
around the area for 35 min….. & then, I find my favorite instant coffee:
Nescafe Excella & make the 1st purchase of 9 jars to take back to the
states.
@ 10:30am we all meet in the hotel lobby, then we take 3 taxi’s to the
restaurant “Shofukaku” where we have a lunch & meet the rest of the Togari
Family; The father, Atsuki, the mother, Yasuko, oldest son, Ken, his wife
Shiori, and their children, Kenta & Sakura; then the youngest son, Shogo,
& their oldest daughter, Eriko, & youngest daughter, Aine. 2 boys & 2
girls…just like us.
This Shofukaku restaurant is a huge one story building. We walked through
many hallways & ended up in the Tempura Room. This was a neat way to get
to know each other, everything we ate was battered in tempura & that took
time to prepare which gave us all more talk time. The Togari’s would tell
us what we were eating if we didn’t know it ourselves. All of it was very,
very delicious….well, most of us felt that way! As it was quite warm,
Yasuko presented each of us with our own foldable Japanese fan; each fan
was a different design and was used quite often.
Afterward, we all walked over to the nearby Nittalji Temple(20 min) & the
only temple in Japan that enshrines some of the holy bones of Buddha
Sakyamuni. After walking inside the temple, tossing a coin & saying a
prayer, we all (except Nick) taxi back to our hotel. Nick had to go with
Eriko and take care of some wedding details.
I need to mention that yesterday after our arrival, Kathy & I received
several boxes of goodies from the Togari family in our room: A good sized
box of fresh mandarin oranges; a good sized box of large grapes; one large
cantaloupe; a bottle of white & bottle of red wine; 2 bottles of apple
juice; 6 large bottles of bottled water & one small bottle of concentrated
lemon juice. Since we have all of these items in our room, we invite the
rest of the gang to join us @ 6:30pm for an evening of healthy snacking &
more family time.
Before the gang arrived, Kathy walked over to the Daiei store & purchased
some crackers & cheese for the occasion.
Around 9:00pm, 2 people were beginning to fall asleep during my brother’s
speeding ticket stories (it had to be the hour, not the story telling) but
it was the signal that the party’s over.
Lights out: 9:45pm
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