Time flies when you’re having fun!

We had a wonderful visit from my FIL earlier this month. We traveled down to Kamakura, a town about 50 km southwest of Tokyo. Kamakura is a natural fortress, surrounded on three sides by mountains, and a bay on the fourth. It is a wonderful place, filled with a lot of culture. It was, according to The Institute for Research on World-Systems, the 4th largest city in the world in 1250 A.D., with 200,000 people, and Japan’s largest city at that time. Now it is mainly known for its temples and shrines and the Great Buddha, a very large outdoor bronze statute of Buddha. The statute used to be housed inside a wooden temple, but the temple was destroyed in a tsunami sometime in the late fifteenth century, while the statute survived. After the temple was destroyed, the statute remained outside.

Another fun place we went was to Meiji Jingu, one of my favorite places to visit in Tokyo. It is a Shinto shrine dedicated to Emperor Meiji and his wife Empress Shoken. The day we went ended up being a perfect day because there were about 5 weddings going on, many new babies being presented (babies, when they are about one month old, are brought to a Shinto shrine for introduction to and first contact with the gods and to have a Shinto priest perform a ceremony to ward off evil), and many children in kimono having their pictures taken for Shichi-Go-San (七五三, literally “seven-five-three”) (a traditional rite of passage and festival day in Japan for three and seven year-old girls and three and five year-old boys, held annually on November 15).

Another result of my FIL’s visit was Squirrel learning that she LOVES pancakes. I made pancakes the last day that my FIL was here, and he shared some of his with Squirrel, and she was in heaven.

In other news, as a result of being completely sick and tired of putting up with cat hair, our cats were given new haircuts. What do you think? :-)