Wakana says it snowed but I was busy doing dishes and didn't see the few flakes she saw. It is around zero here but that is in degrees C which makes it about thirty two F.

Aunt Sachiko stopped by and we drank green tea and ate some chocolates she brought. Wakana and I showed her the photo album we have with us. After she left we sat in the tokanoma room and talked then went out to the sushi restaurant.

At the restaurant we sat at a counter and watched as plates of sushi rolled by. We just took whatever looked good. Each plate had two pieces on it. I tried some of the shrimp, and some other ones. I let the ones with whole raw squid go by. There were even hot dog sushi and hamburger sushi. I tried the sushi with the hot dogs on it. I had to.

By the end of the meal I had fifteen little plates stacked up in front of me. Each one cost one hundred and five yen or about a dollar. The others also had stacks of little dishes. Total cost was about forty five dollars for the four of us. And very tasty too.

Today Wakana is packing up some of her personal possessions to finally take home. We'll need to make more room in the bookshelves at home. We will ship the winter clothing home and some of the books and carry two boxes with us. We'll probably have to pay the overweight charge.

There is a store here, Cainz, which is a handyman shop selling lumber and hardware as well as housewares. I buy some wonderful tie down straps there whenever I come to Japan. I walked around there the other day and noticed a little piece of hardware that I had searched for desperately back home (in Maine) but never found. I had been convinced that SOMEONE had to make one. I started noticing other such things that I had been looking for in my life and never found in any American hardware store. There were little sheets of plexiglass, both clear and colored, small rolls of sheet metal, brackets in many sizes, and other items I had looked for once upon a time. I am so jealous.

They also have wonderful methods for making the most of a small space. There are rolling wooden racks for moving stuff out of the center of the room. There is a shelf system consisting of wooden uprights cut to take wooden shelves. The end result looks very nice. I noticed styrofoam blocks shaped like concrete blocks. When I asked Wakana she said it was the same as the college student's bookcase made with planks and concrete but these were cheaper and easier to carry.

I'm having a great time here but we go home tomorrow.