Wakayama - extended family dinner and karaoke - Wed 2 May

Take picked me up from the station in his snazzy little Nissan 'Cube', and we drove out to his family's home. It has luxuriously tall doorways, and spacious rooms. There's a spare room, just for me.

We had a stew-pot dinner with his parents, his brother and sister-in-law, and their two little'uns, Hina (4) and Takumi (2) (see next post for cutesy pictures). Both kids were very shy, and wouldn't even make eye contact or say hi, despite exhortations from all around them.

Along with Asahi beer, I was plied with mum's home brew of plum liqueur, made by setting Wakayama's famous plums with big rock sugar crystals in shochuu (vodka-grade spirit) for a few months before removing the plums. This brew was a couple of years in, and absolutely delicious. The plums were kept in a jar, still in liquor, and I had a couple. The insides of my mouth felt like I'd had an anaesthetic, but they were delicious.

In what's becoming a familiar experience, Take's father struck upon the memory of 'Luke Skywalker', which he enjoyed repeating for a while. Maybe it should be part of my self introduction in Japanese?

Their kitchen has a foot-pedal operated kitchen sink.

Take's father was a policeman, as were his father's father and brother, now retired, but I understand once ran the show at the Wakayama police station. His brother Kouhei is in the national defence force. Take works in administration at a knitting machine manufacturing and service company, as does his father in his retirement.


Take and I headed for a night out locally in Wakayama. We did some Print Club sticker photos, which were heaps of fun - strike poses as instructed by the machine, then decorate the intermediate product with images and writing before printing them out and sending them to your phone. Then we hit the karaoke for a couple of hours before tottering out for a MakkuDonarudozu snack of fries, and I had a McFlurry - or 'furorerii' (I can count too many syllables, I'm sure, and it's damned hard to say) - Kit Kat flavour.