The mayhem begins…
Mum and Dad, Julie and David, and Aunty Lynette arrived this morning. We didn’t know what time they would be getting in, but knew it was early, so I was waiting in the lobby at 7.00 while Kaoru got ready. Then she came down and I went upstairs to shower and have breakfast. Not long after Kaoru called and said they were here and on their way up. Next thing I knew, the room had us all, plus suit cases – thank god we weren’t in the Washington Hotel!
We got towels so everybody could have a shower, and then we finally managed to hit town and go for some breakfast. We went to the cafe across the road as Kaoru and I had enjoyed it previously. Then Kaoru took Julie to a chemist to get a face mask as the smoke was bothering her, and I took everybody else up the Government Building for the scenic view of Tokyo. Julie and Kaoru eventually joined us, and we left around 10.45. We met Leila under the clock at First Kitchen, while Kaoru ran ahead to buy our tickets for the day. Michael was feeling under the weather – he had a few flu symptoms yesterday – so decided to give it a miss. Then we met up at the train station. We had about 15 minutes before the train left, but we wanted to be early so we could sit together. Finally we were on our way to Fujisawa.
We changed trains and caught one to Kamakura, where we walked around the streets (sampling food and beer along the way) and took the family to their first temple. We then walked back to the train station. With all the stops, this took us about 2 hours, so we were a little bit behind schedule, but it wasn’t a problem. The train out was very crowded, and we didn’t even get on the first one as it was too full. Kaoru made the call that we would have to skip the second stop because it would be too hard for us to get back on the train, so we went to Enoshima instead. We walked across to the island, most of the way up the steps to the shrine, took photos, and then walked back. We got on the train to Fujisawa, but a different line, which meant we were on the start instead of the middle. This saved us having to try to squeeze on to an existing train.
At Fujisawa, Kaoru, Leila and Julie went to the chemist, while the rest of us waited. Then it was off to “our restaurant” – the one we always go to in Fujisawa. They were thrilled to have us there, and had made individual placemats for us with our names, and Congratulations on our Wedding. The food was great, saki fantastic and company wonderful. After dinner Kaoru, Julie and David went to the supermarket to buy some food while we took our time to leave and met them at the train station. Then we got back to Shinjuku, checked everybody in, and went to bed.