Japan - Day 7

Thursday morning was a school day. Research was done on the 32 questions about Japan. Did you know that the average income person in Japan is US$35,400 where is only US$20,500 in Canada. Japan has the highest average income per person of any of the countries we are visiting, including the US. It shows too! Most cars are within 4 years old. They may be a little smaller than when I was here 20 years ago, but they are still on average better than you would see in Canada. You also don`t see much poverty in Japan, although I am sure that it exists. Welfare seems replaced with numerous jobs that create busy work. I saw a team of 5 older gentlemen cleaning the weeds from between the bricks in the sidewalk. A squirt of Round-up would have done the job just fine.

We have spent the last couple of days visiting some old friends of mine. We went to the Ogata`s place and had dinner with Mama-san and her family. Ogata, who passed away from cancer a few years ago, ran the local beer gardens that I spent many a night at. Mama-san speaks very little English but it was a gracious host and laid out a full spread of food for us. Thomas wolfed down about 10 pieces of sushi, plus a whole lot of other good food. Kate ate a couple of fried chicken pieces! Mike and his family were also there.

After our visit to Ogata`s, I received a call from Onuki-san. He was a regular at Ogata`s and spoke English well and he had heard I was in town. He invited us back to Ogata`s for dinner last night, and to go sightseeing with him today. It is Golden Week here. It is the busiest holiday season in Japan. Today was perfect weather. I think all 127 million people decided to go sightseeing to the same places we tried to go. We spent hours on the highway bumper to bumper not going far. We did finally end up in Enoshima again, and went to a great aquarium. Amazingly the kids didn`t start a fist fight in the back seat – whew! We were all hungry, tired and crabby after we got home. It was very gracious of Onuki-san to take us – we just picked the wrong day to do it.

We are to meet up with more friends tomorrow. A week tomorrow we are going on the Shinkinsen to Kyoto and to Hiroshima. Two more weeks in Japan and we will be back in North America. Time does fly when you are having fun.

Cheers Ian

The video is of some jelly fish we saw at the Enoshima Aquarium.

Japan - Day 7