We met our friend packing the kids off for school and shortly we would be following. Today we are very privileged to visit a Japanese school. Breakfast was a bowl of traditional Japanese miso soup, rice, lightly poached egg and green tea. Great!
We walked to the school past many cute houses and quiet lanes. We changed our outdoor shoes for slippers. Small lockers were provided for the shoe switch and a small tag turned over to show that the locker was being used.
The school was quite big over many floors. Yokahama is a large city and has many children. We toured the classrooms, said hello to the children and spoke to the sweetest vice principle.
Next stop was a guided tour of the local area. We stopped by the supermarket to buy some fried mashed potato and check out the local foods. The fruit in Japan is super size. Apples were enormous and strawberries are not only huge but everyone looks perfect. This area of the city was very quaint and had a pond filled with koi carp. We picked up some Japanese cakes at the bakery to accompany our fried mashed potato snack.
Back at home we were treated to a fantastic bowl of udon noodles and the accompanying soup was amazing. We topped it off with our earlier purchases (FMP, curry cake, sweet chocolate bun and a sweet red bean bun). We were pretty full!
We chatted for a while, had help planning the complex train journey through Tokyo and ensured we had everything we came with. In fact we had far more than we came with because we had so many beautiful gifts from our friend and her family! Our time here was amazing we are so lucky to know such wonderful people. Otsukare sama desita!
We walked to the nearby train station together and said a sad goodbye to our friend. The train departed and we made our way towards Tokyo. 3 carefully planned train changes took us to the Tokyo sumo museum which was interesting. There are no sumo matches in the nearby stadium in February so we could not watch a live match. Many places were now closed but we walked through a beautiful memorial park and along the river before taking the train once more.
We arrived at our stop, searched for our accommodation and spent the night cooking our own Okanomiyaki on a portable grill. We also learned a lot of new things about Japan and chatted for hours before flaking out on a very comfortable futon.
