KONPIRA SAN
Sat morning I went over to Sugimoto San's house to give him his last private Japanese lesson. I have been teaching him for well over a year and in that time, due to his hard work and diligence, it has been a pleasure to watch his English, especially his conversational ability, bloom. At the beginning I was trying to teach him using my very broken Japanese and conversations required heavy simultaneous use of both our electronic dictionaries. In recent months he has been conducting business via fax with a contact in China using their only common language, English.
After class they took me over to Konpira San so I could ask the Gods for their blessing in person. Sugimoto San is a marine engineer, so it was a fitting location as we share a love of boats and the sea. Unfortunately, it was the first real scorcher of the summer and we managed to arrive in the hottest part of the day. His wife, well into her first pregnancy, went off for a relaxed coffee whilst we battled the 785 very steep steps to the top. 
I paid my respects to the Kami Sama and we headed back down for some of the best udon I have ever had in a beautiful old wooden building. After checking out their favourite "private" beach in Nio, which happened to be packed, we headed back, thoroughly exhausted, for shaved ice, an unsung Japanese speciality.
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