Respect

Today is respect for the elderly day in Japan. It's a national holiday. To celebrate, my daughter made pudding for her grandma. Old people love soft foods, ya know.

The real celebration was when we loaded the family into the Japo mini car, picked up grandma at her house, and drove up the hill to her favorite public hot bath. Actually, its a nice place. Everything is clean and the water is from real volcanic mountain springs, so it feels and smells good, if you like sulfer.

After bathing (don't worry, men bathe in a different room than women) we all went out to lucnh at the best restaurant in town. In truth, where this hot bath place is, there's only one restaurant. Located right across the street from the hot bath place you find the restaurant. They serve traditional Japanese lunch fare, mainly gigantic bowls of soup with noodles.

The place was crowded and everyone was "drinking" soup, as the Japanese say. In reality, they slurp the soup and they slurp it loudly. It was like a symphony of slurping coming from every table in the restaurant. We shared a table with one fellow because there wasn't an empty table available for us. My ears are still ringing from his slurping, approximately 9.7 on the slurp Richter scale.

My mother in law loved the place, loved the soup, loved the slurping. For $30 of US currency all 4 of us got a bowl of tasteless broth, some cabbage, a hand full of noodles, a few pieces of onion, 2 pieces of tofu, and a small amount of greasy meat. Out of respect for the elderly, I didn't complain. At least not when she was in close proximity.