I've been home a week now. Yesterday we buried my sister, Sal. It's been a sad whirlwind. Here's the rest of our trip:
Another train trip got us to Fukuoka, a major port city. We found our Airbnb & enjoyed the afternoon sun sitting on our balcony over this large, modern city. Around 4, we headed out to find the central park. Lots of people were there many jogging, strolling, and walking dogs. A couple of islands had connecting bridges so you could cross to the other side of the large pond. Lots of large swan paddle boats were filled with smiling people and the ducks swam close begging for food. Quite pleasant. It was time to find dinner and to my delight, we found pizza!! Rog got roti—good but not as good as my pizza! Back at our Airbnb, we filled the washing machine available for our use and then hung our clothes to dry. Imagine how satisfying it felt to put all clean clothes back in our suitcases. First time since we left Pittsburgh on Feb 13. It's times like this that make us appreciate all our luxuries at home. Though we both agree that the warm toilet seats & bidets are a luxury we need. We had a folk museum on our agenda today where we walked through a traditional machiya (house) that was the home to a silk merchant. The weaver was set up and many items made from the fine material on display. Loved the enclosed garden. An attached building housed lots of local items and we watched a film about the annual festival, The Yamkasa. To honor the sun god, men carry a massive, tall & overly decorated float (think Madri Gras but with no wheels). Must weigh tons! Each part of town builds one and then they race with each other. The film caught the excitement of the crowd and the exhaustion of the men who carried them. The after sun was bright as we climbed into a boat 😊 and cruised down on the several canals in this town nicknamed Canal City. It's also called the Food Truck Central so after dark, we took a walk through that chaos…and the got a sandwich at the local bakery and went back to our Airbnb to eat.
That's when we got the news that Sally had taken a major turn for the worst. She'd been in the hospital over a week & I'd talked to her just a couple of days ago. I slept fitfully with my phone by my head. By morning, she was gone. Rog cancelled the reservations we'd made for the next couple nights, we packed up & headed to the airport. Luckily, we were in Fukuona with a large airport. We got lots of help from a kind lady at the ticket counter who in the end, advised Rog to just get a ticket online. Within an hour, we had new tickets. We flew to Tokyo, (about a 13 hour flight, so we landed a half hour before we left thanks to time zones…), then Atlanta and finally Pittsburgh. Jake picked us up, we got to bed around 1, got up to hug the kids & Sarah as they left for school and then got in our car and headed home. Home to my heartbroken siblings & their families and my kids & gkids. In 2012, I was in China when my mom died. You can be very far from home…but family is always close to your heart.
