Mountain top

We had a great lunch with a colleague of John's today, Yukie Ueno and her husband and 18 yo daughter. They served us a special family dish called chirashi sushi which they serve on birthdays and holidays, and which included smoked salmon and dried fish, mushrooms, eggs and rice, and (if one desired), salmon eggs.



Jack tried the salmon roe but wasn't a fan.

Although it's becoming repetitive to say, we were overwhelmed with the kindness shown to our family. After lunch, Yukie took us to a gondola up to the top of Mt. Moiwa (and a bus from there to the very top) where you can look out and see the city of 1.8 million.

It really gave us a sense of the size of Sapporo (much larger than it seems when we walk or ride around our block) and its geography (we could see out to the Sea of Japan to the northwest and to mountains in every other direction). Sapporo was also the site of the 1972 Winter Olympics, so there are various ski jumps and lift rides up nearby mountains (and just so many green, lush mountains in general).


After admiring the view from the top, we had what has been the very best ice cream in Japan so far (and what a quest to have, the search for the most delicious ice cream...). Livie liked the green tea ice cream, Jack had mint chip, Katie had blueberry, and I had something called "fresh milk". John shared bites of all. After we rode the gondola down, we stopped at a coffee shop in a building that had once been home to a poet, and the girls fell asleep in my lap. Yukie's husband drove us home, and we again felt so lucky to be here, surrounded by great people.