Tom visits Dad's old haunts

Quite a nice day, considering we were all horribly sleep-derived. We got Tom up at 7.00 and he had a good crawl round Hiromi's flat before breakfast, which he ate quite well, including most of his Mum's slice of toast. He seems to like Japanese bread. He had about an hour's nap after breakfast (very important) before we headed off down the hill to Rokkomichi on foot, which was a nice walk on such a pleasant morning. A 10 minute train journey got us to Kobe station, whereupon we headed to Harborland for a spot of shopping at Aka-chan Honpo (Baby HQ). We ended up getting some Japanese food and a Hanshin Tigers shirt for Tom, which he will look very smart in.

We had lunch at a tonkatsu restaurant (very nice) and Tom was given (and drank) his first cup of tea. He seemed to really like, much to Nik's surprise/dismay. We had a wander round the boutiques in Mosaic and came across a shop selling masses of Studio Ghibli merchandise, including some huge Totoros for almost 400 quid! If the exchange rate wasn't so awful, I'm sure we wouldn't have come out of there empty-handed.

Tom had about half an hour's sleep as we walked back to the station, and we then caught the train back to meet Hiromi, who introduced us to a friend who has a daughter, Sumireko, almost the same age as Tom. He felt immediately at home and grabbed all, and I mean all, of Sumireko's toys and proceeded to have a fantastic time, while she sat somewhat bewildered on her Mum's knee. We made our excuses and left to come home for Tom's tea. Hiromi prepared him his first tofu, which he did eat, but only after Nik hid it under a veneer of pureed veg. I reckon he'll eat it OK in the future though.

I needed less persuasion to eat my dinner, prawns in chilli sauce with miso soup and rice. Delicious. Here's hoping for a better sleep than last night.