April 16: Gakuencho

Luke woke up at 3:45 this morning so Christal took him down to get some food and then they came back up and ate. I stayed asleep until about 7 and when I woke up Luke was napping. I finished his karaage chicken and rice for breakfast and then tried to catch up on my blogging/journaling. Luke woke up at about 7:45 and then we all got ready to go because Ojiichan wanted to leave the hotel by 8:15 to go see his alma mater, Jiyu Gakuen, and meet up with Hiro-ojichan and Kyoko-san. We arrived at the Hibarigaoka station and then walked about 10 minutes to the school.

We got there a little early so we wandered around outside of the school a little before Hiro-ojichan and Kyoko-san met us. The campus was beautiful with a lot of trees and vegetation all around. There were still a few sakura that were blossoming too. Many of the buildings on campus were designed by one of Frank Lloyd Wright's disciples who was a graduate of the school.

When we finished walking around the soccer game that started when we arrived was still going on and Ojiichan went and watched it for a little while, reliving his glory days. Unfortunately Jiyu Gakuean was losing 7-0 by the time we left the school.

Watching the Blowout

From there we went to Kyoko-san's house, which was just a short walk away. She lives in the house along with her son and his family. Both her son and daughter-in-law are teachers and her granddaughter is 8 years old and her grandson is 5 years old.

Kyoko-san's House

Of course Luke gravitated toward both of them and the granddaughter really engaged with Luke a lot. By the end of lunch Luke was following her around everywhere.

Luke & His Newest Friend

Kyoko-san made an amazing lunch for everyone. We had chirashi zushi with ikura, salmon and tons of tamago on top.

Chirashi Zushi w Ikura

She also made some shrimp cocktail with vegetables, maki tamago that was stuffed with green beans and fish and nishime with chicken, snow peas, daikon, lotus, carrot, shitake and konyaku.

Shrimp Cocktail, Maki Tamago & Nishime

My personal favorite was the osumashi, or clear soup. It had a chrysanthemum shoot, maitake mushrooms, tai snapper and sansho. The broth was very light, but flavorful. The maitake was earthy and meaty. The snapper was sweet and mild tasting. The chrysanthemum shoot added a nice bitterness to complement everything and the sansho had a surprising citrusy flavor and aroma that freshened up the soup. For dessert Kyoko-san made us some homemade strawberry ice cream that was one of the best tasting strawberry ice creams I've had, and a slice of baumkuchen cake.

Osumashi w Chrysanthemum, Maitake, Tai & Sansho

After lunch we spent a little more time with Kyoko-san's family before we had to leave to meet Naomi-san and her daughter and son-in-law back in Shinjuku. We met them at an okonomiyaki restaurant called Gyunta in the Lumine 1 department store. We got several different kinds of okonomiyaki to share, unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the menu and the website doesn't have an English feature, so I'm not exactly sure what each one was, but they were all really good.

Okonomiyaki w Yamaimo Mixed In

Somehow the restaurant messed up our order and we ended up getting three free okonomiyakis. One of them was made with squid when we ordered it without and I'm not sure what happened with the other two. We ended up having so much food that one of the free ones was completely untouched, so they packed it up for us to take home.

We're Stuffed with Okonomiyaki

When we finished eating we said our goodbyes and then headed back to the hotel. Christal put Luke down and I went out a little later to see if any sakura blossoms were still out at Chidorigafuchi. Unfortunately most of the blossoms were gone, but it was still a nice walk. After taking a few pictures I headed back to the hotel for the night.

A Little Late for Sakura Blossoms