Day 2 in Japan

THURSDAY, MAY 23

We all woke up very early. Very early.

My mother had a cramp in her leg which woke up Jessica, who was sharing the downstairs room with us. My mother had a bad time trying to get up from the floor.

From that day on, we made sure she slept on the fold-out sofa in the living room on top of the futons.

Fred came downstairs, complaining that the air conditioner in his room wasn't working, the door to his room was broken and birds woke him up too early.

And the toilet upstairs was one of the Japanese-style ones where you have to squat!

Needless to say, everyone sleeping upstairs used the toilet downstairs most of the time. Almost exclusively.

Mariko-san came over from her house, to show us how to separate our garbage. In Chiba, the prefecture (the Japanese equivalent to a state) where we were staying, garbage collection is very strict. There were two bags. The red one is for trash that can be burned (paper and discarded food); the yellow one is for plastic, glass and aluminum cans. And they were collected on different days. I could never figure it out, but Mariko was wonderful, coming over to collect the trash on the right days. I'm sure she was astounded over the amount of the trash we went through!

But there were seven of us. Right?

She made two trips so we could all go to a grocery store called the York Mart, where we bought even more food. For lunch we went to a kaiten-sushi restaurant. It's one of those restaurants where plates of sushi are placed on conveyor belts and you choose what you want to eat.

We rested the rest of the day.

That night, we walked to the Shin Kashiwa station area to another grocery store, this one called Tobu. Oh, Shin Kashiwa means New Kashiwa. We decided to go to the Mos Burger. This is a chain in Japan where you can get regular hamburger. But being Japanese, you can get a rice burger. Instead of buns made of bread, the buns are made of rice. Auntie Keiko ate a hot dog on a stick. Cheryl said the burgers were much too small!

The TV that Ken-chan rented was OK, but it wasn't hooked up to cable, so the reception was bad.

We hardly watched any TV, so we usually went to bed before 11 p.m. every night.

Fred decided he would sleep on the other fold-out bed in the living room, so Jessica went upstairs to sleep with her mother.

I had the downstairs room to myself, which was fine with me.