On Wednesday, we took the bullet train to Tokyo. Erica helped choose the afternoon activity, so we ended up going to Capyneko, a cat and capybara cafe in Harajuku. Beforehand, we had a snack of some very elaborate shaved ice (kakegouri) at PAP Coffee.

For dinner, we went to Denny's, which is mostly notable for the trivia that it's an entirely different restaurant chain licensing the Denny's branding. It's a good time, though, and "family restaurant" is a thing for a reason.

On Thursday, we went to visit my host parents, Kyoko and Isamu, in Shisui. Was really lovely catching up (making the most of my somewhat faded and not that strong in the first place Japanese language skills), and I'm so glad Erica had the chance to meet them in person. They took us out to a really nice lunch nearby.

On the way back, we stopped at Tokyo Skytree Town. Erica didn't want to check out the observation deck of the Skytree itself, the view from the floor 30 lounge in Skytree Town was high enough. The lower floors of the mall there had a lot of pop culture focused shops, among other things. Erica was very excited about the Pokemon Center and we had dinner at the Kirby Cafe, which was definitely very cute.

The biggest of travel plans has arrived.

The long flight from Boston was managed, though we got to Osaka on almost no sleep. Direct flight from Boston went well, though it's a long journey. The connection in Narita was interesting, the domestic terminal has only a few vending machines past security and you take a bus from the gate to the plane on the tarmac. It makes Narita feel like a small regional airport stapled to a major international hub.

Arranged for an airport pickup, though missed our driver in a surprisingly chaotic crowd in the airport arrivals lobby. Got that straightened out despite some struggles with the international roaming on my cell phone plan. (Which took a call to T-Mobile support later to get straightened out.)

And then we were up in middle of the night despite being on about three hours of sleep in the last 36. The sound approach is to just close your eyes and just wait in darkness or silence for four hours straight. Good luck getting a kid to do that, so we took a different approach, a little thing I like to call "jetlagmaxxing", and went to the combini at 3AM for a snack instead.

Our first real day of the trip was spent at Universal Japan. It does seem a certain amount of silly to go that far for a theme park, but it was pretty good for a first-day activity. And we were all (somewhat shockingly) feeling awake and full-energy all day until Erica crashed to zero abruptly just before dinner around 6. Erica was mostly not in the mood for roller coasters, which made me disinclined to spend time waiting for those. And she wanted to spend a lot of time in the Wonderland corner of the park (which has Peanuts, Hello Kitty, and Sesame Street characters and most of the little kid rides). I still had a lot of fun with the calmer rides, treats, and all the details of the theming. Super Nintendo World was absolutely amazing, though. We all exclaimed aloud when we stepped out into the main area, it was really a beautifully realized setting, nostalgic and lively and fun. Donkey Kong: Minecart Madness (Erica's one roller coaster of the day) was top-notch in my book and my favorite bit of the day.

Today, we went to see the deer in Nara Park. They're cute, and we were no exception to everyone wanting to feed the deer, but they will mug you for a deer cracker if you have one (or look like you have maybe thought about having one at some point). Their nipping isn't as aggressive as possible, but nip they do, and some of them would clearly consider taking your crackers at gunpoint but for the lack of guns (and thumbs).

Before heading to the Kasuga-Taisha shrine, we had steamed kakinohazushi (sushi wrapped in persimmon leaves) at Izasa-Nakatani-hompo Yumekaze-hiroba.

Kasuga-Taisha was amazing. I imagine if you're actually Shinto it hits unfathomably hard, but it's definitely an awesome and uncanny place: The monumental lanterns and thousand-year-old trees and wildlife that seems to grow increasingly pious as you approach the shrine. I got insufficient cash from the cash machine this morning and we almost didn't get to see the shrine interior as a result (Erica would not have wanted to make the climb again after backtracking). But we were bailed out by a friendly pair of tourists who spotted us admission when I asked if they could exchange some yen for USD or payment via Venmo or similar. Turns out they were from the other (i.e. the original) Cambridge. Sorry for not catching your names, you're the best, that really made our day.

For the other main attraction of the day, we went to Osaka Castle, which had an interesting museum and fascinating scenery. Afterwards, we went to Osaka Shinsekai and had supper at Jarinko, a very friendly and beautiful little izakaya. They made their own plum wine in-house, fermenting it on the side counter in large jugs. The appetizers were delicious. Got through with dinner just on time to see the whole neighborhood lit up for the night on our way to the train.