Visitors

Just before christmas my parents came to visit with my Nan. I drove some of my friends to the airport to go off for the holidays and then waited for my family. It took ages for them to come through, and I was starting to worry. I even went to the information desk to ask if everyone from their flight had come through, but they said to wait a bit longer (they had landed and hour ago). Eventually they came through, but their luggage didn't. They had been delayed and had to run for their connecting flight, and the bags didn't make it. Fortunately here there is a fantastic service called Takubin which will deliver anything, anywhere in japan the next day very cheaply. The airport rang us to tell us that the luggage had arrived that night and it would be delivered at ten to twelve. I thought that meant between ten and twelve, but it came to the door at 11.47. We couldn't believe how spot on they had been! None of this waiting in all day business, just pure efficiency. So Mom, Dad and Nan had their clothes again.

Unfortunately, Dad had also left his wallet in Paris. That took a bit more sorting out. Over the next 6 days, we lost so many things it was untrue: my scarf, mom's gloves, bag of souvenirs, dads hat (repeatedly) . We did eventually find every item before they left, but not without much running around and fortunately a lot of laughing. We went to the same shrine four days in the week - first to see the shrine, second for mom to buy some charms, third to look for the bag of charms went it disappeared, fourth to buy some more charms to replace the first lot. On the last day we asked at a hotel we had bee to just on the offchance and found the original bag. I hoped it would all end when they went home again, but I lost my train card the next day. That one never showed up.

The bad luck didn't just apply to personal property. We took our visitors to Ueno to see all the museums on monday - The one day of the week when they are all closed. We took them to Oriental Bazaar (a brilliant place for souvenirs) on thursday - the one day of the week it is closed. Even a hotel bar we tried to go to for a drink turned out to have a special act and an expensive cover charge which only happens two evenings a week for a couple of hours. We managed to go another time. We walked around the city so much my Nan's feet were bleeding by the end of the day, we ate out so much we were very poor, but we all had a good time and they saw a lot of the city. On one of the days we hired a car and went out to see Hakkone, (a pretty little tourist spot in summer but dead at the end of december) and wandered around a sprawling shrine and the lake. We went to Kamakura on the way back which was great - I have made a note to go back sometime and really explore as it was after dark when we arrived so we didn't see much - the top of the head of the golden Buddha was the highlight there. We nearly lost dad when he tried to get out of the car at traffic lights to take a photo, and we had lots of fun with the Sat Nav too!