2 January 2009

Emily woke soon after 2am, and after half an hour of trying to settle her I brought her into bed with us. It took until gone 4 to get her to go off as she could not find a comfortable position (neither could I). She woke again at 6.30 and I realised how bad her nappy smelled, so changed her. She really bawled her head off, but stopped as soon as the clean one was on; I felt terrible for leaving it on. It would have been better to have woken her the night before. She seemed quite wakeful, so I put her on the breast so she would nod off again, though only until 7.30.

The substantial buffet breakfast was very welcome. Emily ate her cereal then happily scoffed whatever we gave her - croissant, scrambled egg, fruit and yogurt. Her appetite seems good when she can have some of our food. In the room, I got her to have a nap as she'd had such a disturbed night, then we quickly packed, checked out and walked back to the station to meet Aidan and Sachi.

We took a small local train along the coast. It was quite quaint, sharing the road with cars in places and passing within feet of houses at times. We got the odd glimpse of Mount Fuji, looking superb in the clear air. Alighting at Inamuragaseki, Emily's got her first experience of sand, which in this case was black and sparkly.

She'd been here before, back in March, but was just a wauling little bundle then. All around the grassy headland kites , pigeons and crows wheeled, and from there we could see the full majesty of Fuji.

As it was nearing lunchtime we continued along the safront to Hase, which was busy but not riduculously so given the holiday season. We had lunch in a really pokey place with only about 10 seats and tables 6 inches wide - the sort of place you can' only go to if you can speak and read Japanese as even the prices were in Kanji characters.

From there we walked on to the top of the road to see the giant Buddha bronze statue, cast in the 11th century and which has withstood tsunami and earthquakes.

Running out of time, we stopped off for coffee and waffles on the way to the station (naturally Emily helped us eat them). Travelling home, she was so tired that she dropped off on Nick's shoulder - it's rare for her to nap without being on the breast. She woke back in Tokyo when we were nearly home.