Today we went to see a couple of bunraku plays. It’s traditional Japanese puppetry and I figured it was time for me to be more adult and see some more cultural things. Actually, I thought it might be fun, and it was thought it was pretty long. There were two plays with an intermission in between and both plays were in two acts. There really only was time to get up during the intermission, and most people broke out traditional Japanese bentos and ate in their seats. What I’m trying to get to is that I had to sit in a short Japanese theatre seat for four and a half hours listening to shamisen music and a single narrator chanting and my ass got pretty tired. But it was pretty interesting.

Afterwards we met my not-really-my-aunt for a snack and continued on to dinner with her. Here’s the snack, a Japanese parfait at the same store we went to yesterday.

I had a steak, pork, and chicken dinner and I figured that the steak would be tough and the chicken pretty tender. Surprisingly, the beef was the most tender and the chicken was pretty tough. It was all tasty.

Here’s my sister and my not-really-my-aunt.

And my mom (on the left) and her older sister.

My aunt doesn’t eat much, so she and my mom split dinner and I still ended up with some of their food.

We made it back to the hotel at 7PM and I’ve been sitting around watching Japanese TV because I’m beat. Something that’s often on Japanese TV is reruns of Columbo and guess who is hooked on Columbo?