The Family Visits

The day after Christmas the family, Dad, Mom, and Greg, arrived in Japan. It was Dad's third trip to Japan, but for Mom and Greg, it was the first. For Greg, it was his first time flying to another country. I met them at Kansai International Airport after enduring quite an ordeal to get to the airport. From my house, I employed no less than eight forms of transportation to get to the airport ... and I was about thirty minutes late. Fortunately, on the way back to Kure, we took the bullet train (shinkansen) from the airport to Hiroshima.
Our first trip was out to the island of Shikoku where we visited Matsuyama. We stayed in Dogo, famous for its historic onsen or hot springs. However, nobody in the family was keen for public bathing in the nude, so I went by myself. We also got to see the lovely Matsuyama Castle and eat some local cuisine.
We left Shikoku in the morning and Mr. Sakata, my lovely boss, met us at the ferry terminal. He took us to his house in Yakeyama where we had a big lunch with he, his wife, and his baby daughter, Momo. We all had a good time and the folks were quite impressed with Mr. Sakata. I think Mom was especially taken with cute little Momo, who is around a year and a half old. She gave her some English puzzles.

The rest of the week, I tried to give the family a taste of my life in Japan. I introduced them to as many people as possible. They had dinner with my fellow AET teachers, my host family (pictured above), and my awesome Japanese teacher Noriko and her husband. We were also very fortunate to meet up with Natsuki, our former exchange student from Kure. She is living in Tokyo now, but came down to Kure to visit her family and we got to hang out together. We all went to karaoke together with Noriko (pictured below).