Here’s a short pictorial overview of some of the great stuff we’ve been upto here in Japan from when I got here in mid-December up until New Years Day 2010.

Please feel free to comment at the end by clicking on “Comments”.

When I first got to Japan, after the drama of my flight being cancelled by Jetstar (and ruining a bunch of plans), we had a combined welcome party for both myself, and the latest JET program teacher and his family who were visiting.

His girlfriend came a few day later and we had another party, with Japanese curry for dinner.

As Christmas was coming and my mum had given the family a gingerbread house as a present, we, together with a friend, built our very first gingerbread house!!

And a triumphant group after finishing!

We had Christmas dinner at a Japanese restaurant. Lots of fun!

Fun for everyone!

After christmas we gave the doghouse a makeover and painted it pink!

It suits her!

My birthday was up next. We went to a nearby hotel where we went for a hike in the beautiful mountains and used their onsens, which faced the mountains and the bay.

We also had a special blowfish dinner (yes the poisonous kind the chef needs a license for). Yum! And we’re still alive

And the birthday cake! When it is cut, it makes little heart shapes! Cute and smart (and tasty!)

We then went to Matsue in Shimane and stayed at a hot spring hotel, Cho rakuen (長楽園). This place has the largest natural outdoor onsen, and it is mixed bathing, which is fairly unique for Japan.

It also has great food. Here’s us having a special set dinner.

We’re in our own special dining room.

Great food and drink.

And here’s the food. This was the first course. There were several other courses as well consisting of lobster and fish.

And the Sashimi platter. Did I mention Sashimi? YUM!

And after all the eating. This is the entire family, including grandmother and great-aunt.

We had a cold change come through and it started snowing!

One other great thing about the hotel is that we were staying in the suites. Which had their own private onsen per room.

I loveeeee hot springs. At our overnight stay I went 7 times into the hotsprings. Which is quite a lot, but it’s soooo good!

Driving back was a little scary with all the roads snowed over. Several feet of snow in places!

And a family photo as we were leaving.

We came back on New Years Eve, in time to have some soba and sushi for dinner, as well as watch the special NHK New Years Eve TV show.

New Years Day is big in Japan. We went to the temple and then came back for brunch.

And everyone welcomes in 2010.

Including shin-shin.

2010 has just begun. A new chapter with lots of new and exciting adventures awaiting.

Wishing everyone a safe, prosperous and happy new year for 2010.

]]> http://www.leginag.com/2010/01/japan2009/feed/ 1 http://www.leginag.com/2009/01/happy-chinese-new-year/ http://www.leginag.com/2009/01/happy-chinese-new-year/#comments Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:32:47 +0000 Leginag http://www.leginag.com/?p=334

Have a great Year of the Ox!

This is my favourite photo. I think it’s pretty clear why.

This is Kasumi’s favourite photo. The two of us are framed against a background of cherry blossoms.

We took over 50 posed-photos on the day, but only bought three. It was heaps of fun and I think Kasumi looks absolutely gorgeous.

Don’t forget to leave a comment! We love to hear what you think about our travels and photos!

Prepare to scale heights, plunge into the anime world of Akihabara, view the awesome food I’ve eaten, and more. The picto-blog will take you on a journey to experience a slice of Japan.

The journey began on a clear, yet cold, Christmas Day, catching a Shinkansen to Mount Aso. This was the FIRST time I’ve been on a shinkansen, and it didn’t disappoint.

Smiling me. I went from Hiroshima to Hakata to Kumamoto to Mount Aso.

There are lots of different types of Shinkansens. Hikari, Kodama, Nozumi, Ariake. They use different trains and have different speeds (both train and number of stops wise). Kodama is the slowest, and Nozumi is the fastest. Ariake is specific to Kyushuu (I believe). This is the Ariake. Kind looks like a prison train to me.

The Ariake is a pretty funky train. It’s very compartmentalised, this is the compartment I was in. You can also see that the overhead storage is like that of a plane. Swanky eh.

On Japanese trains and buses, you’re not meant to talk on your mobile. You will see lots and lots of people sms-ing, playing games, reading ebooks etc, but if your phone rings, everyone will glare at you, and sometimes the conductor will even put an announcement asking you to switch your phone to silent and not talk on the train. On Shinkansen’s, you have to go into the corridor sections, or use special compartments like this one below.

I spent something like 5 hours travelling from Hiroshima to Mount Aso, by three Shinkansen’s, two trains and a bus. I won’t bore you with my scenery shots, but this shot was taken at 10x zoom, and I thought was pretty cool. Wind power ftw!

Now we come to the Mount Aso volcano caldera area.

It’s the largest active caldera in the world. The last major blast was in 1993, but there have been explosions over the past 300 000 years. The crater has a 128km circumference.

I actually didn’t go up to the crater (they run a cable car up to it), but stopped 5 minutes away at the Museum/Observatory. When I got there, I saw a neighbouring hill behind the complex, and spied a path at the top of it. I thought it would be a great place to get an awesome view of the crater.

Zoom on a camera ftw. This is a zoomed-in picture taken of the path from the mountain in the picture aove that I saw from the complex.

There were busloads of tourists, chinese, japanese and korean, but avoiding them, I struck out on a path heading in a likely direction. After a few ups and downs and lefts and rights, I came to a crossroad, and naturally, chose the road less travelled (or most weathered).

It wasn’t easy, both the path and the weather.

It was blowing a GALE the higher I got. I was almost knocked down several times, and when it got REALLY bad, I actually had to lie on the ground, to be shielded partially from the wind by the grass. ==” Did I mention it was COLD? There was no snow, but there was ice around.

Even though I was freezing, the view from the top was simply spectacular, and worth every step.

Pictures are worth a thousand words.

And this one is prob worth two thousand. The wind was SO strong, not to mention I was looking into the sun.

It was amazing. I called this post “peek climbing”, because I was climbing another mountain to “peek” at the Mount Aso volcano. After getting off the mountain, I made the trek back to Kumamoto, and went to defrost in the hotel bath.

Tomorrow’s blog post will cover my adventures in Kumamoto City, then following blogs will adventure to sushi train, Tokyo and my growing anime collection.

Stay tuned!

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas, filled with yummy food, joyous times, great presents and lots of yule-tide cheer.

I’m heading to Kurokuma on the 25th, and then Tokyo on the 27th, so lots of exciting times for me. I hope your Christmas festive time is just as much fun.

On Friday we went to a buffet restaurant called “Cotton Club” which had three floors, and the buffet. It had a very Western/marine feel to it, similar to the train we took to Fukuyama. The restaurant was very popular and had lots of parties in there, but the area we were in was very cozy, and most importantly, close to the buffet!

And the first set of dishes we ate. The food had everything, from pizza, to fried tofu to daikon to dumplings, noodles, potatoes, beef, fish and everything. <3 The photos don’t really do the food justice, but they are really yummy!

On Sunday, to celebrate our ‘mini-anniversary’ or what I call K-day, we went to an all-you-can-order-food-and-drink restaurant, which was only 2800yen for males and 2600yen for females. I guess guys eat and drink more than girls. But 200yen isn’t that much of a difference…

The restaurant had nice tables and enclosed areas, and a vague Japanese atmosphere.

The drinks were a nice size. You could only order the next round once you had eaten/drunk everything first. Stops us from being too greedy =p

The food was yum. We ordered, well lots of stuff, and this was the first batch to arrive. Once the food started coming, the photos stopped being taken. You can see Takoyaki, pork and cheese rolls and karaage chicken.

Tabasco sauce, as my mouth can attest to, has not lost any of its potency through being exported from the USA to Japan. It went really well on the pizza we got (picture of pizza missing as it was in my stomach already).

But now we come to the best part. In China, you were limited to one plate of sashimi. But here in Japan, you can order as many – as – you – like. It makes going to the buffet WORTH IT. SUCH GOOD VALUE!!

The first plate of sashimi. You’ll notice my drink is Calpis, which is an awesome drink that we don’t have back down under. The sashimi plate had prawns, tuna, squid and salmon.

The second plate of sashimi was just Salmon, but it was REALLY FRESH! Like, omg, fresh!

The third plate of sashimi was Salmon also. I love salmon. <3. This photo also features a flying fried dumpling-like food.

The fourth plate was the sashimi selection platter again. They had several other sashimi plates available, but <3 salmon and tuna. Jealous yet?

We then took a break from all the awesome food to have dessert.

After dessert, when the last order time came around, I simply HAD to order another plate of salmon sashimi, and here you see the 5th and final plate of sashimi we had.

With a good exchange rate, it would have been AUD$28 for the meal, and even with the crappy exchange rate we have now, it was AUD$45 for the meal. The sashimi alone (not counting everything else we ate and drank) made it EXCELLENT value.

Man, I love sashimi, and where better to have it than in Japan? We’re going to another all-you-can-order restaurant for Christmas Eve. *grin*