I woke up again a few hours later with Ayumi and her cousin (I think her name is Lian but I could be wrong… let her do her introduction in English so I’m not 100% sure) sitting in front of my face smiling down at me. We ate left-overs from the previous night (and still couldn’t finish them all), along with some fish and rice. After eating we sat around for a while, complaining about how full we are, and Ayumi said we should go for a walk so Ayumi, her mom, myself and Daisuke walked to her grandfather’s tomb down the road. The weather was really great and the air was fresh. We walked through the sort of inverted ditches between fallow paddy fields and along a small road. Ayumi was wearing a mask the whole time because of the pollen. People are sneezing all over the place, myself included, so lots of people take to wearing masks. Apparently one in five Japanese people have pollen allergies.
Anywho, we got to the tomb, which is about the same size as an Irish plot in a graveyard but much more built up and fancy. See my “Okazaki” photo set on Flickr to see a photo of a local graveyard. Bodies aren’t buried here and instead are cremated. The family picks up the bones and fills an urn with them after the cremation. It must be pretty horrific for the family members involved.
We met up with Ayumi’s aunt at the tomb, as she was replacing the flowers, and she asked if I wanted to go into the nearby temple. She knocked on the door of the building attached to the side of the temple, where the resident Buddhist priest lives, and he opened it up for me and brought us in, answering our questions. I hardly understood a word of what he said, but smiled and nodded my way through it.
We came back to the house after and Ayumi was complaining about having to go to work at 5pm so we could only hang out until about 3. I kept telling her to skip work and her mother and aunt joined in, making excuses for her. She eventually called and asked “is it ok if I start work at 7 or something?” and the boss was apparently really busy at the time so he just said “yes, yes, sure, that’s fine” and let her change without looking for any excuses at all! With some extra time, we went to a meat-speciality restaurant for lunch and I had an ok burger. Ayumi’s dad called and said that he was back from soccer practice and wanted to see me again before I go, so he drove me to the nearest Shinkansen station, 小山 (Oyama), which was the better part of an hour way, along with Ayumi, her mom, her aunt and uncle, and their two boys (Daisuke and his brother, who I believe is Matsuhiro but I’m not 100% sure).
At the station, Ayumi’s mother and aunt bought me some local food as a souvenir and Ayumi and Daisuke bought the special tickets to allow them as far as the train’s doors, while I said goodbye to everyone else.
I boarded my train, cutting off the unrealistic thoughts creeping in that were telling me to forget about the train and try to go for one more night, and headed back to Tokyo, changing trains and continuing on the two-hour Kodama to Toyohashi, and changing trains again and getting back to Okazaki some time before 10pm.
It was, as I expected, a great weekend, and even though we didn’t go to many tourist attractions such as Nikko, or go to any recreational places such as game centres or karaokes, just being together with the family again and getting to know everyone that little bit better was an unforgettable experience. The whole weekend was basically spent eating and talking, hence the lack of photos. The Nakajima family have really been great to me and I can’t wait to see them all again whenever I get back to Japan. I won’t get to see Ayumi again before I leave, but she’s looking into an American J-1 for the end of the summer, or maybe an Irish working-holiday visa for some time next year, money permitting. 
