I woke up around 7.45. Everybody else was up, naturally. After a shower breakfast started, which consisted of (several slices of) pizza toast and left over oden. We tidied up our room and had a wander around the yard. The 4 of us then went for a walk – first to drop something off to the lady next door (who I have met several times before), and then just a walk around the block to enjoy the fresh mountain air.

Back at the house we had some tea and planned what we would do for the rest of the day. We packed our bags and took some photos of the 6 of us, and then all piled in to Otoosan’s car (Kaoru in the boot! Lucky it’s a hatch!) and went to see their vegetable garden. It had grown so much since March when we were there last. We tasted some of the fresh food, and it was beautiful.

All in the car again, and it was off to the train station, where we said goodbye to Otoosan and Okaasan. We were sad to leave them, but needed to continue our travelling. So a train ride, 3 Shinkansen’s, a local train, and about 5 hours later, we got off at Hakodate, in Hokkaido!  It took us about 10 minutes to find our hotel, but we checked in and went to our rooms.

We realised the Sumo was on, so turned on the TV and saw the end of the day’s fights.  We went for dinner, just as it started to rain.  And boy did it rain!  We ran across the road to an Izakaya, but they were full, so managed to hail a taxi which took us to a place Kaoru found – Hakodate Beer.  We ate and drank there for a couple of hours, including a beer which “the presidents of companies drink”.  It was 10%!  Michael and I had one each.  It was quite nice.

We walked back to the hotel as the rain had subsided, and went to our room for drinks and snacks, which we bought from the 7-11 on our way home.