{"id":1483,"date":"2007-10-30T07:01:49","date_gmt":"2007-10-30T14:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=1483"},"modified":"2007-10-30T07:12:12","modified_gmt":"2007-10-30T14:12:12","slug":"back-to-osaka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=1483","title":{"rendered":"Back to Osaka."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What&#8217;s weirder than pulling into a Japanese rail station and seeing a giant golden Goddess of Mercy?<\/p>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/kannon.jpg' title='Kannon-sama'><img src='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/kannon.thumbnail.jpg' alt='Kannon-sama' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Maybe it&#8217;s going to your cousin&#8217;s house and seeing 3 cousins and various kids of theirs for the first time in 16 years! We weren&#8217;t going to stick around, but they invited us for dinner and told us we could meet our cousin&#8217;s kid&#8217;s fiance&eacute;. So we stayed for seafood pizza from Domino&#8217;s and sushi. Check out the squid and shrimp.<\/p>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/seafood_pizza.jpg' title='Seafood pizza.'><img src='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/seafood_pizza.thumbnail.jpg' alt='Seafood pizza.' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a picture of my two eldest Osaka cousins (brother Kimikazu and sister Kyoko). That&#8217;s Kyoko&#8217;s son on the left, and her grandson (the son&#8217;s nephew) on her lap. The son was telling us how he did absolutely nothing in college and how his mom wrote his final paper. We asked why it didn&#8217;t have his mom&#8217;s name on the diploma. He&#8217;s a butcher now at a supermarket and works horribly long hours wondering why he went to college at all.<\/p>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/cousins1.jpg' title='2 of 4 Osaka cousins'><img src='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/cousins1.thumbnail.jpg' alt='2 of 4 Osaka cousins' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Next is a blurry picture of my aunt, my youngest Osaka cousin Maki, and my mom. My aunt is my mom&#8217;s older sister. I finally figured out I had the flash turned off later in the day.<\/p>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/ma_n_cousin.jpg' title='Aunt, youngest Osaka Cousin, and ma.'><img src='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/ma_n_cousin.thumbnail.jpg' alt='Aunt, youngest Osaka Cousin, and ma.' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Proof that my sister is in Japan with us: a picture of my sister and my uncle (big brother to my aunt and mom, and father to all my Osaka cousins).<\/p>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/sis_n_uncle.jpg' title='Sis and Osaka Uncle.'><img src='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/sis_n_uncle.thumbnail.jpg' alt='Sis and Osaka Uncle.' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And finally, my Osaka cousin, his son, his kid&#8217;s fiance&eacute;, my cousin&#8217;s wife, his middle daughter, and my aunt. Last time I saw them, the son was 12 and the daughter was 9. Now he&#8217;s getting married?<\/p>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/cousins2.jpg' title='Cousins and a possible addition to the family.'><img src='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/cousins2.thumbnail.jpg' alt='Cousins and a possible addition to the family.' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I forgot to take a picture of my cousin&#8217;s youngest daughter who is 21 now. There are also no pictures of me and everyone has told me that I&#8217;ve gotten fat. EVERYONE. That&#8217;s not going to keep me from eating. Takoyaki is still on my list of things to eat, and I may have to get more Beard Papa pumpkin cream puffs. I&#8217;m going to be even fatter soon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What&#8217;s weirder than pulling into a Japanese rail station and seeing a giant golden Goddess of Mercy? Maybe it&#8217;s going to your cousin&#8217;s house and seeing 3 cousins and various kids of theirs for the first time in 16 years! We weren&#8217;t going to stick around, but they invited us for dinner and told us we could meet our cousin&#8217;s kid&#8217;s fiance&eacute;. So we stayed for seafood pizza from Domino&#8217;s and sushi. Check out the squid and shrimp. Here&#8217;s a picture of my two eldest Osaka cousins (brother Kimikazu and sister Kyoko). That&#8217;s Kyoko&#8217;s son on the left, and her grandson (the son&#8217;s nephew) on her lap. The son was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=1483\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Back to Osaka.<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}