Visitors!

Okay!  Life for us in Japan is usually pretty tame but as we had visitors last weekend, the busyness ramped up a bit!  Ooh...  I wish you could have seen our house.  It looked so good!  Tetsu, as always, was gung-ho to clean up "a bit" and though we attacked the rooms bit by bit day after day, still the last two days were intensive!  The floors got washed (all of them!), the curtains got washed (all of them!), most of the windows got washed... blankets got taken to the laundromat, and Tetsu rearranged out normal storage area/cat room into a passable guest room!  The only room that wasn't really presentable was my sewing room because anything that had been taking up space in the other rooms got moved to my sewing room for the weekend.  John got taken to the vets for boarding and we were ready for guests!

The main purpose of Julieta and her brother and mother's travels was to visit Korea because her mother is a big K-pop fan and so the three of them spent a week in Korea.  I'm afraid I don't know much about K-pop nor Korea but they said they had a great time.

The three of them got to Tokyo early last week and next it was Julieta's time to check out anime and figurines etc.  (I'm not sure about that culture either).  But Julieta was most excited about a trip to a mini-pig cafe!  I think the pigs were the highlight of the trip for Julieta!

Finally they arrived in Utsunomiya and Tetsu and I picked them up from the station and promptly took them to a non-revolving sushi restaurant.  These less expensive sushi restaurants used to be called revolving sushi because you could just pick up plates of sushi that revolved on a conveyer belt around the guest tables but during the pandemic, most of those types of restaurants turned into quick order (by tablet) and quick delivery (by little Shinkansen bullet trains that run on tracks right to your table.)  

We finally got back to Nikko where the cats claimed laps and everybody could relax until evening.  We took a walk around the rice fields and neighborhood and in the late afternoon we headed for a day onsen for an evening bath.  

For dinner we went out to a nice Chinese restaurant.  As usual, I'm not much of a cook...

The next morning we got ourselves ready for a day out and an overnight stay and then headed for the shrines and temples of Nikko.  It was SO crowded though that we chose not to stand in lines to see the main attractions of the shrine (the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" monkey carvings and the "sleeping cat" carving) and instead just wandered around the large spiritual area where Buddhism and Shintoism meet.

They were very happy to see the tail end of the cherry blossom season.

Julieta at the landmark Shinkyo bridge.

We stopped for some street snacks...  These are usually called taiyaki in Japan and are waffle like things shaped like fish with sweet bean paste or custard inside.  In Nikko they are called Soppo and instead of being shaped like fish, they are shaped like monkeys.  Tetsu had a bean paste one and the rest of us had custard filled ones.

Julieta was very happy to get her street snack!

Finally we arrived in the mountain town of Kawaji to stay overnight at a small onsen called Saka Hijiri.  It was so nice!  There seemed to be only about 15 rooms in the onsen, and the girl at the reception desk remembered Tetsu and me from when we visited to ask about staying despite the fact that Julieta's brother has tattoos.  The girl at the reception (I found out her name was An-san) suggested we stay on this night because most of the guests were foreign and foreigners don't have the aversion to tattoos that Japanese do.  Anyway, An-san was very glad to see us and did her best to make our stay special.  

I had a chance to talk with her and learned that she is from Viet Nam and has only been in Japan 7 months even though she spoke excellent Japanese and also English!  Though the hotel was old, the onsen was adequate, the rooms were spacious and the food was fantastic!

A very nice, traditional Japanese dinner.

The scenery from our rooms.

A lovely inner Japanese garden.  I don't know why the tree was in autumn mode but it was lovely.

Breakfast was delicious and I was impressed at how everyone in Julieta's family are willing to try anything and enjoy the experience of different tastes... even though some of the morsels might not be something she'd choose again, Julieta's mother proudly finished off everything in front of her!

We left the onsen on the early side to get back to Nikko within an hour where our three guests gathered up the remainder of their luggage and then we headed off to the station which was another 45 minutes away.  

It was a whirlwind 48 hours with Julieta and her brother and mother but we got to feeling that we'd all become closer.  Tetsu and I sure had a good time, and I think Julieta's family did too!

And that's how our weekend visit ended.  Julieta's mother said next time she wants to show Tetsu and me around Mexico so hopefully someday we'll get in another trip with Julieta and family!