Sayounara Morimoto-san

The Morimoto's are such great people and they'll be one of those I will miss a lot. They've taught and shown me so much about Japanese culture and have always been great fun and a real comfort to be around.
The Morimoto's plus one - This was the only shot I had of them that night and Akemi doesn't usually look that doughy. What a crack up though.

The Yamamoto ladies and myself

We had a little Sanda beef dinner, cooking the meat at the table on a small steamboat sized grill, with some tofu salad and sweet chestnuts. Apparently Sanda beef is the original Wagyu beef aka Kobe beef. I'm not too sure about the difference but it all tastes so rich and tender! For dessert, we had some cake and these really yummy mochi (glutinous rice) stuffed with chestnut, which are from Sasayama - about half an hour North of Sanda by train. Yamamoto-san had brought them to tea ceremony class one time and I ohh and aahh-ed at how good they were, so I was lucky enough to get one last taste of them.

Morimoto-san is of course my calligraphy teacher so before I left he gave me the exhibition piece I had written and something else that he had written and placed onto a scroll. To him I guess it's something he does all the time but to me it was so special - something I could look at when I'm back home and remember that I was once in a place so far away from home meeting some pretty amazing people.

The scroll writing was a message for my farewell and future. Akemi explained the meaning in bits and pieces saying it talked about hoping for a brightly lit road for the future and encouragement to stay passionate about following a certain path.