Dear Elliot, Emmala and Eliza,

Today was so much fun that it is hard to know where to start when telling you about it. In the morning, we met up with Masami. Masami lived in our home when she was in high school for a whole year. She is one year younger than your father and one year older than Aunt Rachel. We have not seen here since she went back home to Japan in January of 1999. Rachel saw her a few years later when she was able to visit Masami's family.

With Masami and here husband, we visited Tokyo Skytree, which is a tower that is even higher than Tokyo Tower about which I wrote a couple of days ago. Then we visited a busy section of Tokyo and a famous temple. It was very hot and we did a lot of walking, but everything was so interesting.

Then in the middle of the afternoon, we took a train to Nikko, which is where Masami's family lives. Her mother met us at the train and, after visiting a very interesting place where a man does carving and has a huge parade float, we went to their home were we had a special dinner.

We had a noodle slide! You would have thought it was a lot of fun! Masami's father had made a slide out of a long piece of bamboo - maybe about 20 feet long. It was split in half and he rigged up a hose so water ran down the slide. Then they placed noodles in the slide and we had to catch them with our chopsticks. We had cups, made out of bamboo, with sauce in them. When we caught noodles we would dip them in our cup and eat them. There was a lot of laughing as we tried to catch the noodles as they went by. Once in a while, they would put a plum in the slide, just for a surprise. It is very hard to pick up a plum with your chopsticks.

After the noodle slide, we went inside where we told stories, ate a lot of other special dishes, including pancakes with vegetables in them. We also had presents for them and they had presents for us. It was a wonderful and very fun evening.

Tomorrow we will have more adventures with Masami and her family in Nikko.