The rest of the museum was excellent, with ancient pottery, calligraphy, textiles, paintings and some amazing Buddhist sculptures. There were no restaurants nearby, so I ended up walking back to the river and eating in one of those restaurants where you buy tickets for your food from a vending machine and give it to the staff.
Next was the potter Kawai Kanjirou's memorial museum, which is actually his house and kilns preserved as they were when he died. Small, but beautifully presented and almost certainly a better way of giving an insight into his life than your standard museum.
My friend in Gifu changed her plans twice so I had to queue again to get a new reserved seat to Nagoya and was late for dinner on my last day at the Mizutanis. When I got there, the place had been taken over by their grandchildren, Kouta and Ayako. Kouta had calmed down a bit since I'd last seen him, but Ayako was now the one tearing the house down under the guise of 'helping' with everything. Their mother Yoshiko and four month old sister Eriko were also there.
Normally I don't get on well with kids or babies (Kouta threw a slipper at my head the last time I was there) but by the end of the evening Kouta and Ayako were calling me おねえちゃん (big sister) and climbing all over me, and the amazingly good-natured Eriko and I had got into a cycle of looking at each other, seeing the other was smiling and starting to laugh - then Eriko would hide her face in the mattress and look up, and it would start again. I laughed so much I got a stitch.
Now on the shinkansen to Nagoya, where I'll change to the Chuou line for Nakatsugawa to meet up with some of the teachers I worked with when I first came here in 1998. Tomorrow it's back to Nagoya to stay with the Iidas and Dad arrives on Monday!
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