Mum and Dad's visit to Japan

Mum and Dad's visit

My parents came to visit me in the middle of September. It was really lovely to see them after 7 months. They went round places in Tokyo with me for 2 weekends and inbetween travelled round lots of sites in Japan. I was lucky enough to be able to join them on the Tokyo leg of their tour, so went to see the Tokyo national museum in Ueno park, which I probably would never have gone to, Sensoji shrine again and the Japanese garden in the Imperial palace gardens that I never knew existed.
The following weekend we went to Odaiba, the Meji shrine, met my Dad's friend, a professional shogi (Japanese chess) player, and attempted to work out how to play Pachinko.

Pachinko is a Japanese pinball machine. There are loads of them in Japan, mainly used by 'salarymen'. My Dad really wanted to try it. Despite a staff member explaining (in Japanese) what to do, it didn't seem to make much sense and my Dad lost whatever. Although at the start he amazingly had a winning streak which also seemed to surprise the staff member. Won't be trying that again, the place was much too noisy and smokey.