We’ve been spending time with the son and daughter-in-law getting a tour of Nagoya and having a meal with Shiori’s family.

Yesterday morning we walked through a lovely area of Nagoya called Central Park. But first we had breakfast at Komeda’s. This is where you get free toast and boiled egg with your coffee! Very economical. All the expensive shops are in Central Park but there was only one shop I wanted to visit – the stationery shop! The Japanese are legendary for their cute stationery items and Shiori had promised me lots of opportunities for browsing. If paper crafting isn’t your thing (and why isn’t it?) you may not know what you’re missing. I have some photos to show you.

If we didn’t travel so light I might have more… might be a little overkill to buy checked in bag space for stationery?

Muji is a Japanese shop where you can buy household stuff and clothes and food and where I got the tiny spatula and Darragh got some t-shirts.

And then there’s a whole warren of shopping under the streets of Nagoya. We visited a second hand clothes shop, a chemist (we have a need for paracetamol which is Tylenol here) a sock shop and a restaurant (where we had Udon noodles – yummy) but we could have easily browsed for hours visiting shop after shop. We didn’t have the energy so we went back to the hotel and the young ones shopped some more.

When we were back up on streets level I heard what sounded like a politician with a loudspeaker telling us to vote for him but it wasn’t , it was an ambulance… yes. Shiori explained later that the ambulance has to ask people to get out of the way because it’s not a given that they will! So they say, “going through a red light, please stop”, “going through a pedestrian crossing, please wait”. Humans are very confusing… everyone here seems to pay attention to the rules and are very polite and friendly but for some reason they ignore ambulances…

Last night we went to a Korean restaurant in Shiori’s home town. It’s called a Yakiniku restaurant and you get to grill your own food. We had a room to ourselves and we sat at a big table with two grills set into it. The table was lower than the floor but there was space for our legs underneath, making it easy for us westerners to sit without embarrassment. Although getting back up was a little messy, I don’t think anyone noticed…

When we arrived at the restaurant we were welcomed by the staff and we each took off our shoes and put them in a cupboard just outside our private room door. There were a couple of pairs of flip flops nearby and I inquired if I needed to wear them but no they were to use if any of us wanted to go to the bathroom. Then the ordering began. Shiori’s sister ordered using her phone and soon there were drinks and platters of vegetables and meats and bowls of rice arriving on the table.

And when we’d finished those platters there were more. The vegetables were familiar but the meats were very different. There was wagu beef also and pork and chicken, so much variety. First of all – delicious. You know when people say it just melts in your mouth ? Most of these meats did just that!

And there was the memories of childhood – did you have ox tongue as a child? I had but it was in thicker chunks cut across the tongue and I’ve no idea how it was cooked. This tongue was cut lengthwise and paper thin. Then there was beef guts, possibly intestine? Well, I was seriously full by then but I just had to try it. And it was remarkably tasty. Very fatty which of course gives it taste but the way they flavour the dishes also makes a difference.

We got back late after the dinner each of us (except Darragh) falling asleep on the train. They would be going to a Japanese theme park in the morning while we were going back to Osaka on the Shinkansen.

It was so lovely to meet our Japanese in-laws. And you know it’s funny, language isn’t as crucial as you would think. Yes Shiori was busy translating but when there was silence we didn’t fill it, filling it would have been unhelpful anyways. In fact filling silence is always unhelpful so we were lucky not to be able to chuck in some easy small talk if we felt uncomfortable. But for some reason it didn’t feel uncomfortable and that might have been because we were all cooking together. (To be honest Shiori’s Mum did most of the cooking for Denis and I and we were very happy with that!) And in the silence you communicate with your eyes, your hands your smiles and your nodding head. There’s a lot more going on besides language.

Of course they are not our in-laws but I don’t know a word that describes this relationship between two families drawn together accidentally through their offspring and lasting generations. It should have a name so we can talk about it.

Oh and do you remember my palms together bow? Well, right at the end of the meal, each member of Shiori’s family put their palms together and said thank you to the food! That’s what the palm together bow is for here, like grace after meals but not to god, to the food, for sustaining us maybe, for dying so that we might be nourished. Of course I shared my experiences of bowing like that. I don’t mean to brag but I seem to have a back for making the Japanese laugh. Oh and one more thing, do you remember my picture of Mt Fuji from the bullet train? Yes well it seems I may have taken a picture of a completely different mountain. But after a bit of discussion and Shiori’s translation (Me:but I told everyone it was Mt. Fuji) everyone agreed, yes it was Mt. Fuji.

It’s probably not.