Rose Festival

Nana and Opah arrived on Wednesday. It is so nice having more family here to visit. Yesterday it was raining and cold so we simply stayed inside and hung out. Today though the weather was dry, still a bit chilly, but nice enough to be outside. Kan and I had seen an advertisement for a Rose Festival at Kyu-Furukawa Gardens and thought this would be something Nana and Opah would enjoy. So we packed some sandwiches and ventured out to this area of the city we had never been to before. The gardens were beautiful. There was an old historical western home on the property, but in order to go in you had to submit a request in writing beforehand. Needless to say we did not do this so we did not get to go in the house. We expected a Rose Festival meant TONS of roses, but they basically had a rose garden. But it was still fun and pretty. Miyako enjoyed walking across the bridges and looking at the large goldfish, carp and turtles. She really hated when we required her to hold our hand but the bridge was open on the sides. I really did not want to go swimming with the fish to get her. She was also a hit with the other guests playing with her Anpanman ball. Everyone would walk by and say, "kawaii" which means cute in Japanese. We did not argue with them. :)

From there we ventured to Tokyo Tower. Back in 1959 Opah came to Japan for a summer on a mission trip. While in Tokyo briefly, he stayed at a little Episcopal church near Tokyo tower and wanted to see if it was still there. Sure enough it was. We were able to go inside and he met the secretary and priest of the church. He enjoyed re-living memories from 1959. It was an English speaking church and the priest was from America.

We did not go up in Tokyo Tower. We just walked around it looking for the church. However, I did stumble across a HUGE Christmas tree being put up in front of Tokyo Tower. We joked that they are decorating before Americans.

For dinner, we took them to have monja-yaki. If you read this blog consistently, you have seen plenty of posts about this type of food. We take all of our visitors there to try it.

We are all pretty tired from being outside most of the day. Plus Nana and Opah have jet lag and Kan and I have "sympathy" jet lag. The rain is coming tomorrow so we are not sure what we will do. Right now, all I can think about is going to bed and enjoying some of those p-nut m and m's Opah put in a bowl on the kitchen table.