'Jya Ne' not 'Sayonara'

On Friday night, we said goodbye to the Kaneda family. Jason took them to the airport on Saturday morning. We enjoyed a relaxing meal together at El Porton's Mexican restaurant. Tomoka was well behaved, happy and a good entertainer for us. She was styling' with her sunnies...





She held our hand and wanted to sit on my lap. She instructed Jason on his driving...'Green - GO!' and 'Red - STOP!'. Perhaps we succeeded after all in making her bilingual in just three weeks! When we all hugged goodbye, Tomoka directed the hugs...She said, 'Next Daddy hug Jason...next Mommy hug Nicole'. It was hilarious!

We have already heard from them that they arrived safely in Nagoya. Katsuyuki is already back at work and we hope that all three of them get rested and back to Japan-time quickly.

We believe we will see them again. Perhaps in Japan next time. We would like to do a tour of Japan between the US and Australia when we finally head that way. We have many friends we'd like to reconnect with. (Yes - Campbells - Hitachi is definltey on the list!)

It is not easy to send friends off to the other side of the world. I appreciate our families who have allowed us to leave them. And I am thankful for email and internet and weblogs that allow us to keep in touch the way we do. To the Kanedas we didn't say 'Goodbye or Sayonara'...just 'Jya-ne or See you later!'