It was a really nice day in Japan! Taka had to renew his driver's license in TOYOKAWA, about an hour from our home.
The Japanese DMV have a funny way of putting it...for being such serious people. "Change foreign license into Japanese one"
After that business was finished we went to "celebrate" over lunch. We found an UDON restaurant my son says is pretty well known.
The restaurant, the Japanese decor is just so great! 
They enlarged old "back packing" equipment and such to hang up on the walls.
Even the chopstick paper looks so pretty!
Taka opened the newspaper and there's SUMO. It's been so long since I could watch sumo on TV. Taka was noticing and pointing out that so many of the wrestlers are Mongolian now!! Mongolians are taking over the Japanese sport. Uh oh~ I wonder how that's going to 
work!
Then food comes, oh the food!
This was NIKU SOBA or something like that. Thinly sliced beef with SOBA noodles and... the wonderfully, thinly sliced green onions was the best!!! Oh, and the NORI cut into such small slivers too...the sauce was spicy and perfect...
Taka and I shared our two dishes...
The second dish was UDON that had tempura fried shrimp, lotus root and a sweet potato...along with fried pork with miso sauce over rice. Could you ask for anything more?! I think this all cost about $20.00, tho my beer added about 5 bucks to the bill~
After we were full and content with lunch we went a short distance to a Shrine called INARI-JINJA which Taka always went to for New Year's prayers every January 2nd with his parents.
I had to ask this family to take a photo of them. My Japanese wasn't clear enough, he thought I was asking him to photograph me and Taka, I was like "No, YOUR family!" he didn't realize how special they look. The next generation, a unique brand of Japanese, not all of them of course! 
Taka and I shared our two dishes...
The second dish was UDON that had tempura fried shrimp, lotus root and a sweet potato...along with fried pork with miso sauce over rice. Could you ask for anything more?! I think this all cost about $20.00, tho my beer added about 5 bucks to the bill~
After we were full and content with lunch we went a short distance to a Shrine called INARI-JINJA which Taka always went to for New Year's prayers every January 2nd with his parents.
It was incredible also how the building wound around...
I had to ask this family to take a photo of them. My Japanese wasn't clear enough, he thought I was asking him to photograph me and Taka, I was like "No, YOUR family!" he didn't realize how special they look. The next generation, a unique brand of Japanese, not all of them of course!
On our walk back to our car we found a little shop selling green tea soft ice cream. We had a sample bite of some cake they had on display out front and they went to pour tea for us to wash it down with...(see the little cups) the tea was superb! (and free! how KIND of them!!! SO Japanese and yummy!) And then we asked for one soft cream, and just as I was taking this photo the woman held up her fingers to show us the cost of the soft cream "Two hundred Yen" but it looked like a peace sign the Japanese often signal when posing! I laughed with her about it! 
