February 6th!

Today we woke up in Anjo city (same place we went to sleep) and there was snow everywhere! So much for Emi telling us that it will never snow in Anjo! It wasn't as much as Takayama, but still! Smow!

After breakfast the three of us went to a shopping centre in Anjo called Apita. It was a small mall, but there were some lovely shops and we could happily spend time there. Charles bought some magazines, for a change! We had lunch there at a bakery/cafe as usual!

One funny thing we noticed about some shopping centres: lots of shops sell both grown-up clothes and kids' clothes, and the kids' clothes are exactly the same as the adults' clothes. A mother and daughter could wear matching sensible skirts, blouses and blazers. In Isetan in Kyoto, there was a whole floor of brands for kids - like Comme Ca Kids, Burberry for Children, etc. The same brands as the grown-ups! We find this totally weird, but when we talked to Emi about it, she said it was normal for kids to wear those kids of clothes to graduations from kindergarten.

After the mall, we went straight to Emi's brother's house to visit her niece and nephew and sister-in-law. We brought them some presents and they were happy. We had fun playing jenga together, and then we played some games on the Nintendo Wii. It was really nice and we made friends with the kids again.

Back at Emi's place we had an early tea and have been relaxing with the TV all evening. Right now we're watching a movie called "Hula Girls" which is the exact same plot as Billy Elliott, except instead of a small Irish boy doing ballet, it's a group of poverty-stricken Japanese women doing Hawaiian dancing. Same coal-mining town and intolerence and abusive fathers etc. It's really touching even though we can't understand the words.