more pic's added to Mom's blog

DAY THREE - MONDAY

What a wonderful day! But first - let me tell you about Sunday night - after the cold rainy afternoon at the ball park and after we all put on dry clothes to start out again - Curtis and Deana and Avery treated me, Phil, Teresa and Austin to dinner for SHABU-SHABU. What? You don't know what that is? Well, it is a style of eating. We all had to take off our shoes and sit around a table (thankfully there was a "well" underneath the table so that we were not sitting cross legged). Pans of steak meat very thinly sliced were brought out along with some veggies. There was a pot of boiling water at the table and each of us used our chopsticks to pick up the meat and "swish" it through the water twice and it was done. Then we could eat as is or dip in sauces. What a fun evening that was!

We started out on Monday morning to glorious sunshine and blue sky. We caught a bus to go to the train station, changed trains 6 times, went straight up a mountain on a cable car, then took a rope car (tram) to get to Hokone where we hiked up a mountain side to eat "black" boiled eggs. Okay, let me back track - the eggs were cooked in the sulphur hot water that was coming out of the mountain side. The sulphur turned the eggshells black. Legend has it that eating one of the black eggs would lengthen one's life by 7 years. Curtis, Teresa and Phil ate two each - just for good measure!

From there we got back on the tram which took us over the mountain and down to a lake where we caught a "pirate ship" to get to the other side of the lake. Then we hiked to the Cedar Forest and barely made it back to a bus stop to be able to catch our trains to get back home. Travel weary and hungry, we split up to get food that satisfied each of us before going home to sleep and rest for a big day planned for Tuesday - shopping in Tokyo. Phil, Austin, Avery and Deana opted for McDonald's (yes there is a McDonalds in Yokohama). Curtis, Teresa and I went to a local Shushi bar and yes had some wonderful raw fish with rice! Be watching tomorrow for news about our Tokyo trip!