Day #2, April 2nd: Visiting With Mom's Brother

We got up at 5:30 and had a lovely breakfast at the New Sanno's Emporium Restaurant.

Outside Shibuya Station

We then went to the Shibuya train station to pick up our 2 week JR train pass that would give us unlimited JR train and bus transportation throughout Japan.

The JR pass is only available to foreigners. It took a while to figure out how to get where we needed to be.

We returned to the New Sanno after lunch to await mom's brother and his wife who were planning to take us to the Rikugien Garden.  It is a few blocks to walk to the Hiroo train station from the New Sanno.  The weather was cool, but tolerable for mom.

Uncle is only 3 years older than Art and Auntie is a year older than me.  Uncle is mom's baby brother and a retired high court judge.  Although the family is very proud of him, mom still thinks of him as the baby brother she carried on her back before she had to leave for Hawaii.  Auntie wore a mask because she suffers from seasonal hay fever.

Uncle, Mom, Art, Dennis, Me, Aunt

The Rikugien Garden was just starting to put forth its display of cherry blossoms.  The tree showed the promise of  beauty it would be exhibiting in a couple of days.

We watched workers painstakingly tending to the many matsu (pine trees) in the garden.

Here's my brother, Dennis and me taking a photo of the same thing.  I just checked and saw that with our combined cameras we have a little over 25 GB of photos.

The most wonderful thing about our trip wasn't the scenery or the food.  It was mom being able to spend time with her siblings.  The quiet time she had with her baby brother will always be a happy memory.

After the park, Uncle and Auntie took us to the Top of the Yebisu building.  We had a glorious dinner at the Hinone Mizunone restaurant.  We could see Tokyo spread out below us.  Then while we were eating we saw the sun go down and lights begin to twinkle below.

Then came the incredible, artistic, delicious delicacies.   This dish was squid with daikon (radish), tako (octopus) and white fish.

This was called yuba. They said it's some sort of tofu skin.  It's mostly the mixture of herbs and sauce and spices that really make it memorable.

I was surprised that the tempura did not come with a sauce, but with a dish of sea salt.  It was really, really fabulous!

These were scallops and some other seafood.  I'm not usually a huge fan of raw seafood, but these were amazing too!

There were a WHOLE LOT of other dishes that appeared.  By the time these platters of sushi arrived, we could barely eat them.  Mom was a little upset that it would be wasted.  Dennis made a good attempt at reducing that waste.

Me and and my brother, Dennis

My cousin, Kanako arrived during the meal.  She'd had to travel 45 minutes on the train to join us.  It was such a beautiful evening and when they accompanied us back to the New Sanno, it was sad to think that this could possibly be the last time mom would be able to see them since my uncle does not like to travel.