Happy Birthday Okaasan!

Okaasan's birthday!

Okaasan is 80 years young. Healthy in body, living with family and sometimes having a hard time with a thing called dementia.
Last night we went to Susukino, the nightlife area of Sapporo and had a big crab set dinner at a posh place. Okaasan loves crab. So we had a private dining room, a friendly Chinese waitress and 4? or 5? courses of crab and sake and beer!
All went well. She enjoyed the food, We enjoyed ourselves and all was positive.
The waitress gave us two little flasks of sake...Yujiro kept them on his  side of the table, and then under the table out of sight so he could ration how much Okaasan drank - she doesn't realize/remember how much she is drinking and it is very easy for her to become tipsy quickly. Sake is strong and served in tiny glasses...but before he secreted them away she did say a few times: "Is that sake? I like sake! I'll have some sake!"..about a minute after her glass was empty.

We came home by taxi and used one of those services where the taxi comes with two drivers, one to drive the customers in the taxi and the other to drive the customers' car.

Anway - a good night. Recently in Japan there have been some horror stories of elderly people/families ....here we are trying to look after this lady and make sure her life is happy.
Today is actually her birthday so I'll get some flowers and package up a lot of the Kawagoe pamphlets as a dinner present for Okaasan.
I wonder if any other family will contact her at all? Birthdays are not a big thing for adults in Japan...but even so...80 is a good age to have reached.

Crab shabu-shabu with the rice and MORE crab added at the end.