Home Alone - Success!



From this.....east Hokkaido..



 

To THIS!!!! Home.

We are all home again - and the house is still standing. The pans are unburned. Okaasan isn't perched on the kitchen counter howling at the moon....


Our first real going-away-and-leaving Okaasan alone with outside help was a success. The day care people came and chatted and cooked. The cat sitters came and left food for invisable, terrified cats. Okaasan actually met ALL three people - so she probably had a more social time in those three days than she does normally :-)

Of course, she didn't clear away any lunch delivery boxes or dirty plates, or pick up laundry from the carpet...that is normal. But for 3 days it is ok.
She seems ok. A little tense maybe. Yesterday we took her downtown in the car, walked her around shoppings areas, took her for lunch etc. Family time.
Amazingly strange story about winter coat shopping: Okaasan thought she'd ordered a winter coat from a woman in Tokyo!
After lunch in a department store I tried again to get her interested in all the coats on sale, but she was so negative (cheap coats are no good, no - that color is bad etc etc) and surprised us by saying she was waiting for the coat she'd ordered.....
In her mind the coat shop woman in Tokyo (4 years ago) had said she was coming to Sapporo to visit, and Okaasan had asked her to bring a new winter coat....Yujiro told her that he'd been there with her at that conversation and that there was no such arrangement - the woman had just been making polite sounds about "oh, one day I must come and see Sapporo....".
But somehow in Okaasan's mind that polite bit of chat has transformed into a real promise of something going to happen...
Anyway. Coats on sale are all bad. We have to wait until autumn to take Okaasan shopping for a coat.

And.....in east Hokkaido...a terrifying speech in Japanese -

with the Mayor of that town, all sorts of tourism association people in suits, all very formal - 2 hours of utter terror...my Japanese no good at all for this formal situation - my head was kept above water by the interpreter...and then....outside in beautiful east Hokkaido...all of this!!!!!!