a home rebuilt

Today we flew to Miyazaki, and from there drove to Miyakonojo, the town of my wife's birth. We visited with her uncle Hidenori-san and aunt Anne. They've recently renovated the lovely old home that had belonged to Mari's grandparents.

It's now a wonderful mix of styles, with a Euro-Japanese synthesis at one end and the traditional Japanese style at the other (with a modernized bathroom). Really a pleasure to see.

We whiled away a really pleasant (if hot almost to the point of being stupefying) day with the many kids running around. After that we had Anne's fine home-made meal and for me a dual first: turtle soup featuring wild turtle meat and even eggs. The meat's like rabbit or maybe duck. The eggs are like ... century egg, the Chinese cured(?) eggs that are no longer white-and-yellow but green and translucent. I had three helpings of the soup.