The Good, The Bad and My Mother or What I did on my summer vacation

I just returned from a 2 week vacation in Japan visiting relatives and sightseeing. For this trip I went with my mother and my husband...

The Good: My relatives - I love them! They are funny and sweet and just so tiny! I'm the tallest and biggest woman in the family. And I'm only 5' 1/2". See photo above. The temples, shrines and castles. They are all made out of wood (some of some stone surrounding them). A great number of them have been rebuilt in the last 2 centuries because they have been destroyed by fires. Kyoto; see previous comment about temples, shrines and castles. The shinkansen or bullet train. It's like flying but on the ground. The Japan Rail Pass. Buy it outside of Japan and you can use it on any JR train. It's a great deal. The food. I love Japanese food. And no, we did not eat sushi. My family are not big sushi eaters so we ate everything but. Steaks, tempura, yakisoba, yakitori, ramen, tonkatsu, even Chinese food. Yum. I could happily spend every trip to Japan just eating. The people - they were all very nice and very forgiving of my poor, limited Japanese. At least I know how to be polite even if I can't carry on a conversation in Japanese. Tokyo Disneyland - I know, I go all the way to Japan and I go to Tokyo Disneyland - it was a birthday present for my beleaguered husband and it was fun. It wasn't as crazy as Anaheim or Orlando and they had 5 different flavors of popcorn! Coconut, salted, curry, caramel and soda. We skipped the soda and the curry (but boy, did it smell good). The coconut was outstanding. The town of Nikko. It's a lovely place where the 1st and 3rd Tokugawa shoguns (Ieyasu and Iemitsu) are buried. It's a day trip out of Tokyo and really worth the effort. Renting commuter bikes in Kyoto. It was a great way to get around and really see the city. It was cheaper than taking buses, taxis and the subway and it gave our feet a much needed rest! Japanese fashion - no color combination or pattern combination is too much for them. I love it!

The Bad: The humidity. I'm so used to a temperate climate that it's hard to handle 90 degrees w/90 % humidity and blazing hot sun. The typhoon. We had originally planned to go to Hiroshima and Miyajima (in the Seto Naikai - Inland Sea) after visiting Kyoto. The typhoon forced us to return to Tokyo after Kyoto. Grr . . . Argh. I have wanted to see the Seto Naikai for over a decade now so my disappointment was quite profound. It just means another ride on the shinkansen during my next trip. My language skills. I need to improve.

My Mother: I love her, really I do. She's a nice woman and, as she confessed to me on the trip, a spoiled woman. Been spoiled since childhood. Which goes a long way in explaining why she gets angry with me when I refuse to do things her way. At any rate, it was good to have her on the trip; makes it easier to converse with my relatives since my Japanese is not good and their English isn't great. BUT, she has a habit of reverting to childhood when we're on trips. All of the sudden she becomes completely incapable of certain tasks. I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to re-assure her that the world will not come to an end, she has chosen the correct outfit, the correct shoes, the correct jewelry, the correct purse, etc., that she looks lovely, that we aren't going to be late; that the immigration official won't need the phone number of the hotel in Tokyo, that I filled out the forms correctly, that the clothes I'm wearing are in fact the nicest clothes I brought with me on the trip, that I won't freeze because I'm wearing a tank top...you get the idea. She drives my husband crazy because she criticizes me and he thinks she's being unfair. Which is great except that I can't stop her from criticizing me so he gets worked up and has to tell me about it. Meanwhile, I'm trying to not take the criticism too personally so that I don't end up in a fight with her. So, he's mad, she's mad, I'm mad because I'm trying to placate both of them and it was exhausting. I wanted to leave them both on their own so I could get some space some days. I think I need better coping skills. The best part - the flight home. Seriously, she would drift off to sleep only to wake up and insult me. It was fabulous! Thankfully, we did not spend every day with her.

I do love Japan and I encourage everyone to go visit. I'll post a separate entry with photos. :-)