Christmas Part Two

 Christmas Eve was really great. Just being together, talking, laughing and eating!

I spent most of the day cooking. I actually enjoyed spending the day cooking. 

I did roast beef in the slow cooker, it was very tender! Roast chicken. Fluffy saw me take the chicken out of the fridge, she then watched as I prepared it. She kept pawing at me to get some! When I put the chicken in the oven, Fluffy cried. She then sat guarding the oven! And, yes, she did get some after it was cooked!

I also made roast potatoes, broccoli, carrots and of course Yorkshire Puds! And lashings of gravy! 

Christmas Eve dinner

Hannah's plate, most of the beef is under the chicken!

I asked the kids not to buy presents, I couldn't, no extra money! But Christopher used what bit of money he had to buy for everyone, even me. I told him when he said that he wanted to buy something, not to buy for me, as he paid for Costco!

He bought books for Mikey and David, a little pouch with cats on it for Hannah to use for her medicine when she's out. It holds a few days' medicine, very compact and cute!

He got me an electric blanket that wraps around like a cape! It is so nice and warm! I might never get out of bed again!

My lovely warm cape!

Christmas Day started at 4am! Dad called to wish us Merry Christmas!

Hannah and I had tickets for "Phantom of the Opera". We planned a day in the city, window shopping, nice lunch, the show and a look at the last day of the Christmas Market. As always plans changed but in a good way!

After talking to Dad to I decided it wasn't worth going back to bed as I had to get up at 5am to make breakfast and obento for Christopher. Also, Hannah was too excited to go back to sleep.

Mikey dropped Hannah and I off at the train station about 9am. We were able to get a rapid train, the one that doesn't stop at every station, it took about 30 minutes to get to the city!

We arrived in the city before 10am, when everything opens. The first problem was finding toilets! Train stations in Japan, especially in the big cities, are almost cities in themselves, with department stores, cafes, restaurants, movie theatres and even clinics in them!  The train station we were at has two floors of restaurants, the 10th floor was open because the movie theatre is up there, and people were already queuing to get in. I know that the toilets up there are open, so we went up. The escalators and stairs are located in the stores, so they are not accessible before 10 am. Therefore, we had to use the elevators. On the elevators, there have always been signs asking that people who really need to use them have priority!  Now there is one elevator that is a priority elevator, painted pink, with signs in Japanese, Korean and English!

Sign next to the priority elevator.

The red mark on the bottom is for people who have some disability or health problem that is not visible. Hannah has this badge because of her epilepsy.

We realised that we had a lot of time to kill! It was only 10 am, but the show didn't start until 1:30! 

On the eighth floor of the station building is a massive bookstore, Maruzen, which has branches throughout Japan.  I love going there, just to browse the English books. I was tempted but didn't buy any. I left Hannah to have a browse around; she is always looking for books on education and linguistics. 

I found a bench to sit on and had a look through an English textbook aimed at elementary school kids. Once we reopen our school here, I want to invest in some new textbooks, but this one had some obvious mistakes! 

France is not a city!

As we were walking around, we saw a lot of very excited kids, all racing to the same area.  The new Nintendo store was opening that day!

Nintendo Store

We were going to go to a nice Japanese restaurant for lunch, but neither of us was very hungry, but I wanted to eat something, as recently I've been getting dizzy if I miss meals. Part of the fun of having diabetes! We found a soup cafe. We got some lovely warm soup and bread, not very big, just enough to keep us going!

Our early lunch.

I had a beef stew, and Hannah had onion soup! Both were very delicious!

Hannah is being cute!

We took the subway to and from the movie theatre. I don't like this subway line as it's very deep, but I do appreciate that even at the most busy times it's always clean, no graffiti or litter and quiet. I took a little video from when we were going back, about 5:30, the start of the rush hour. Quiet and orderly as people waited for the trains!

Near the subway exit is a shrine, Kushida Shrine.

It's just a few minutes walk from the subway, so we decided that we still had a couple of hours to kill, so we went to see it! This was a change to our plans, but doing something spontaneous is good to, sometimes.

The area around the subway and leading up to the shrine was really interesting! A mix of older buildings, very old shrines and new buildings!

Across from the subway, the symbols are interesting!

A street near the shrine, with very old, small shops.

The entrance to the shrine.

It was so beautiful inside, but there were signs everywhere asking not to take photos! Of course, the Chinese and American tourists disregarded the signs and were taking photos and videos!

This is one of the oldest shrines in Japan, founded in 757! It's dedicated to Amaterasu, Susanoo and Ohatanushi. 

I thought I could write everything in one post but it's getting late and I haven't even got to the main event of the day, "The Phantom of the Opera".

So I'll leave it here, see you in part 3!