Adventures with mother: Arrival-->Xmas

On December 23rd, my mom came to visit me! It was so much fun and I talked all the amount I hadn't been able to talk since I came here.

Day 1 (Dec 23): After 2 extra hours of waiting, I finally met up with mother from her flight and we took the Skyliner (a famous super fast train) from Narita Airport.

At Nippori station, they were decked out with cute Xmas stuff:

 And mother had fun taking stalker photos of the guys selling stuff in Santa suits:

 We arrived at our first hostel: Sakura Hotel in Ikebukuro. It was so nice and even had room service--well, it was the most expensive of the hostels that we stayed at. Mother and I went walking around the city and were able to see a bit of the mall Sunshine 60 before it closed for the night. Mother bought a fluffy keychain and earrings.

Day 2 (Dec 24): Mother and I had breakfast at the Sakura hotel and went to Tamachi to visit my university campus. She really liked it. Then, we walked to Tokyo Tower and checked out the souvenir shop--she was too scared to go up it. This is her tired face after climbing the steep slope to get to the tower:

 Then, we went to Shibuya. We walked around a little and it was loud and annoying as usual. Mother doesn't like it very much. Since the restaurant we wanted to go to was crowded, we went to Miami Garden for pasta where I had squid and clam pasta. We also found a spanish bar but the fee just to sit there was ridiculously expensive.

 Mother went to bed tired that night.

Day 3 (Dec 25): We checked out of Sakura Hotel and Mother came to visit my dorm. She really liked my neighborhood. We opened Xmas presents together and I got a bunch of care packages! aka food
After a rest, we went to Hiroko-san's house at 5pm for Xmas dinner. We had chocolate cake:

 and sukiyaki (thinly sliced beef, tofu, been sprouts, cabbage, noodles, onions etc):
It was made in the traditional Japanese way: on the table on a hot plate and everyone takes some out of the pan as they like.

 Mother and me with Hiroko-san's husband Yuji. This was the second time I was able to meet him. He's soo nice. Such a sweet and funny man.

 Me with my adopted Japanese parents: Hiroko-san and Yuji!

That night, we left Hiroko-san's house at 8ish so we could catch the night bus to Kyoto near Tokyo station. It was hard to find, but I found it! Riding the bus was such an interesting experience. It was pretty comfortable, and the bus constantly stopped at rest stops. Japanese rest stops are the cleanest places I've ever seen. They beat most American rest stops hands, arms, feet, and legs down. Really. Most of them don't have convenient stores--although some do--and these are replaced by vending machines. There are even vending machines that sell hot snacks like fried rice balls, squid balls, etc. Here's what a bathroom looks like:

 I thought this was amusing: the trashcan was called an "etiquette box":

 Little turtle plushie in the bathroom:

But my favorite part about this rest stop bathroom was that it had one of my favorite anime's music playing in the background. Just because of that, it gets my one hundred percent approval.

To be continued...