Mom's first week in Japan

After going to the mall on Sunday, Zach came over to see mom on Monday.  And we ended up eating at Chili's.

During the week we visited Blue Street to do some shopping - mom ended up buying some local honey with ginger among other things.

She also did some birding at the Ikego campground area. At the Ikego campground, we learned about yaguras - small caves dug into the sides of the mountains that were used as tombs several hundred years ago. Here is a picture of one.

On Friday, mom got to experience Mona's favorite Japanese type of restaurant to eat at - the yakatori. A yakatori features meat, vegetables, etc. on skewers and fried rice (the main reason Mona likes these places).

Finally, on Saturday we traveled to a nearby base called Atsugi to watch Macie's last basketball game of the season. Unfortunately, we were missing a of couple girls, so we struggled. But this was one of the highlights - a video of Macie making a three pointer. 

Mom's first trip off base - Aeon Mall

After mom rested for a couple days trying to get over there the jetlag from her trip, we took her on her first trip off the base. We went to the Aeon Mall - which is located next to the base. We ate at a restaurant that served a more traditional Japanese cuisine than what we would normally eat. Everyone really enjoyed the food - very good. 

Afterwards, mom went to a bookstore to find a book by an nature painter and naturalist that was featured on a Japanese television show that we had watched the previous night. We were able to find the book because we showed the employees a photo of the book that we had taken when we paused the show and used our phone to get a picture of the book cover. Amazingly, the employees were able to identify the book and they had the book in stock.

Here is the screenshot that we used.

Mom visits Japan

Mom has been visiting us here in Japan for the last 5 weeks. It has been so much fun having her here and seeing Japan through my mom's eyes. Alas, she flew back home today. So, over the next few days, I am going to post about the different places we visited and try to document some of her experiences while she was here.