Sakai-san's house

The house is about 15 years old. The kitchen is tiny but we eat at a table near it. The boys have a tv room/playroom, then there are at least 3 other bedrooms and a living room - all behind sliding shoji doors. The corridors are barely heated. It snowed yesterday and is very cold. The rooms are heated two ways: one with rugs that are made like electric blankets, and the other with space heaters. So though the bed-sitter may be roughly warm enough to sit quietly in normal clothes, the toilet (complete with its special shoes, of course) is in an unheated area. NOW I understand heated toilet seats! It is a western toilet, though two weeks in the Thai bush have done wonders for my ability to squat-pee, and I could have lived without western. 

The children, two boys ages 7 (Shinko) and 4 (Ryosuke) are sweet, and the older one is learning to read English. Very boy-boy types, wanting to watch tv all the time. Wife Michie and mother Miki made dinner: they'd bought sashimi and tempura and made shabu-shabu, which is like the other hot-pot type dishes I've made. None of the food was terribly tasty but the beef was incredibly tender (and probably incredibly expensive).  I have no understanding whatever of what Sakai-san DOES - his card says he is an officer of the World Development foundation, whose head office is in Vancouver. He apparently works out of his home, though has a "lot of business" in Tokyo and has a membership in some club where he can sleep.

Mother and grandmother of course are suitably impressed that I am running around by myself. Yet the kids here are remarkably mature - even little Shinko, age 7, walks the block or two to the train station and then takes the train for two stops before he gets to his school stop. Every day!

Before dinner, Sakai took me out and up the mountain road - his house is at the foot of a run of mountains, all rising about 5000', I would guess, very impressive, very snowy - up the hill to what appears to be quite a nice resort area. He showed me a ryokan that IS a ryokan - i.e., a beautiful inn with its own hot springs. I forwent any plans of going to hot springs - I'd undoubtedly have gotten pneumonia!

So after dinner I was encouraged to come to bed, and am now tidying up before I go to bed! Peaceful and quiet ; I don't think I'll have any trouble sleeping tonight either!