I am back from Japan, have been out of town again to a conference and have gone to Seattle for a week. I just want to say what a delightful time I had in Japan. The friends we have there are wonderful. We only saw them for a few hours as we were out and about on our own but everyone, everywhere was so nice and helpful. My daughter would show someone the name of the city or rail line we were looking for and they would point us in the right direction.

The last day I was there our friends mother who speaks about 5 words of English and I speak 3 words of Japanese (hi, yes, thank you) went shopping for the afternoon together. They have wonderful Department Stores and Malls connected to their train stations. What a great idea. I wish my daughter who lives in Washington D.C. was so lucky. Her form of transportation is the Metro there and shopping is not convenient for her at all.

Back to Japan; my guess is because so many use trains as their transportation it makes sense to take the shopping to the people. My favorite name of a store we shopped at is called, “Three Minutes Happiness”. It is a small variety store with clothes, jewelry, candles, containers (I would have loved some but I had no room), and other fun things. We had Twenty Minutes Happiness in the store.

Thank you to our friends and the wonderful Japanese people for making our trip fun, exciting and memorable. What is one of your most memorable experiences of the summer?