Arrived at Austin and Kaori's place

There as no trouble at all on the Japanese railway system.  Not that I expected there to be. A nice man at the railway station at the airport sold me ticket right through to Nagoya. We had no trouble changing trains at Shin Osaka.  We even found the right platform for the train to Hozumi without trouble when we got to Nagoya.  And Austin was waiting for us when we got there, to take us back to their place.

Excellent!

We're having a good time here.  Tatsuki seemed pleased to see us, and doesn't seem to mind that we are still here.  We went yesterday afternoon to the Ichinomiya Tower Park to see the Christmas and New Year illuminations, which were lovely.  Both Austin and Lindsey said that they were better than the Christmas lights in Tokyo, which surprised me a bit - but the ones in Ichinomiya were certainly good.  Tatsuki enjoyed the playground, and especially the bouncing area, which was like a bouncy castle only it looked like ski slopes, not a castle.  Kaori quite possibly doesn't enjoy being squashed between Tatsuki's chair and me on the back seat of their little car, but seemed to enjoy the park and lights.  Austin enjoyed the whole thing, apart from the bit where he dropped his brand new, replacement for the one that got dropped in the toilet, iPhone and the screen cracked into a very pretty, but largely unusable pattern.  We called into a local mall on the way home to get it repaired, but the Apple repair store closes at 3 on Sundays.  Today is a public holiday (Coming of Age day), and we have other plans. So tomorrow is now Repair the Phone day!  We had dinner in a Katsu diner to relieve the disappointment.

There are, of course, photos and no doubt there will be more to come.  I'll let you know when they are ready. In the meantime, here's a selection: