The Eagle has landed safely

On Tuesday my mother made her way to us all by herself from Osaka via 3 different trains. That is quite a feat in itself (it must have been the great instructions I wrote for her) and today she completed another great feat in the "foreigner conquers Japan" test. She managed to slurp her way through a bowl of soba noodles - not only managing to get them from the plate into the bowl of dipping sauce, but then also got them from the dipping sauce bowl into her mouth! There were claps all around the restaurant as they removed the drop cloths from around the walls that mysteriously go up when they see a foreigner come into the restaurant.
In other news, the chickens only laid 2 eggs today, but according to my chicken bible most chickens lay on a 25 hour cycle - which means every day they lay one hour later (for those of you who are not good at maths) and then if it gets to the late afternoon they will hold it in till the morning. This cycle fits with the current chickens which means that we might be back to 4 or 5 eggs tomorrow. Either that or the sunlight hours have now dropped too low and they are going to stop laying till spring. All I can say is that they definitely like worms... or anything that looks like worms - shoe laces, ties from my sons trousers (that was a bit dangerous... ) etc.
Time for some revolving sushi..... nothing like visitors for an excuse to eat out!