The Family Comes For An Embarrassing Visit
Even before I left home, my mother had decided to follow me across the
Pacific and take the rest of the family with her. They arrived in Japan
just a few months after I got there myself, but I didn't mind too much
because up until then, I was working so much that I didn't have time to
see the touristy spots: ancient shrines, modern castles, famous sushi
restaurants, etc. We spent a week traveling around by train to
Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, and Himeji.In Kyoto, we had lunch at the most authentically traditional Japanese restaurant I've ever seen.
In the photo, you can see okonomiyaki cooking on the built-in hotplate on the table.
After lunch, we walked to the Ryozen Kannon temple to see the giant Buddha, supposedly the largest wooden structure in the world.
Unfortunately, we got there just five minutes after it closed for the day, so all we could do was have our pictures taken in the parking lot.
My family and my roommate, Justin, went out bowling one night in Kakogawa. While I struggled to break 100, my roommate got an astonishing 237.
In downtown Osaka, we found a rather unusual prohibition: NO DANCING!
Possibly the most fun I had during my family's visit was when my brother, my sister, and I rented a rowboat and explored a lake in Nara.
Nara is famous for sacred deer that wander the city. These days, they're really just part of a public petting zoo, as my brother and father demonstrate here.
I have no idea what Mom is lecturing about in this picture, taken from inside the world's largest Ferris wheel in Osaka, but Deena sure doesn't look happy about it.
Toward the end of the week, we all went for a walk on the banks of the Kakogawa River, which turned out to be so hot that my parents decided to bring along some portable shade. As we went back into town, the sight of Dad brought giggles from a group of high school girls, probably because they had never seen a man carrying a parasol.
My family seemed more fascinated by this Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant than the 400 year-old castle we saw later that day.
At a Hanshin Tigers baseball game, where most fans spend the game banging plastic noisemakers together, my mom saved some cash and made her own noisemakers out of empty water bottles.
After a long day of sightseeing, we ducked into a bar for some drinks and a quick bite to eat. There we discovered some of the more exotic bar food that Japan has to offer: namely, kabobs made from chicken skin, cartilage, ovaries, and just about any other part of the chicken you can think of.
This is what my brother (right) and I look like after realizing we ordered chicken skin kabob by mistake.
