My Adventure Abroad

It’s Snowing at our House!

Sunday, January 15, 2017.  It is snowing today (actually right now – this blog post is real time!)!!  It actually started very lightly yesterday.  But when we woke up this morning it had actually stuck on the ground overnight and it continued to snow through the morning off and on.  We can actually watch the snow fall from the windows in our house. The kids went out to play in it for a little while.  But there really isn’t enough to have a long snow play day.  It would be fun to play in the field across the road from us, but alas it’s actually a rice field and that would be very bad if we ran all over it….

Read More

Green Bike Tour & Cat-pooccino

Day 5 Bali, Thursday, December 22.  So far:  Kecak Fire Dance.  Totem Escape Room.  Bali Treetop.  Waterbom.  Today is the Green Bike Tour.  It’s hard to say what the best activity was in Bali, but my vote is for the Green Bike Tour.  Our friends in Japan that have 4 kids recommended this outing to us.  It was an all day event.  The Green Bike Tour company sent a van to pick us up at 7:30 am.  Breakfast was included in the tour, but I was afraid it might not be much for our hungry crew so I got up early and made peanut butter toast and jelly toast and glasses of water for everyone.  Just a step above prison…

Read More

Waterbom Bali

The agenda on Wednesday, December 21 is Waterbom.  This is a large water park that claims to be the largest (or best?) in Asia and #2 in the world.  I’m not sure according to whose rating system this is measured but it was a good one.  Waterbom is in Kuta, the happening area with the shopping, eating, nightlife and all around lively end of town.  I would say Kuta is the “Waikiki” of Bali.  After another morning visit to Cafe Moonlight we asked Yoga to drive us to Waterbom.  It is pretty pricey to go to this water park, so it is really aimed at tourists.  When we asked Yoga, who is in his early-mid 20’s, if he’d ever been…

Read More

Bali Treetop Adventure

I’m back to Bali again.  It’s past the new year but I’m going back in time.  On Tuesday, December 20, we ate breakfast at our neighborhood hangout, Cafe Moonlight, and headed out.  This time a young man named Yoga (pronounced Yo-gur) drove us to Bedugul.  It really isn’t that far but the traffic is as bad as Los Angeles at rush hour (all those crazy scooters clogging up the streets!) and so we spent a lot of time in the car today.  I had three things on my wish list for today.  One was to go to Taman Ayun Temple.  Then I wanted to take the kids to an adventure park called Bali Treetop.  Lastly, I wanted to see the…

Read More

Happy Hatsumode

Sunday, January 1, 2017.  Happy New Year!!!  Happy Japanese New Year!  Happy American New Year!  Happy Global New Year!  In Japanese they say, “”Akemashite omedetou” which is a casual greeting, or “Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu” for a formal greeting to elders or people of a senior stature.  My cousin says she likes to say, “Yoi otoshi o!” which she says means, “Enjoy the year-end season!” There are a lot of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day traditions in Japan.  I researched a lot of them.  First off, New Year’s is called shogatsu (or more formally, oshogatsu).  It is the most important holiday in Japan.  It actually lasts from January 1 to 3.  Most businesses shut down for this period and…

Read More

Merii Kurisumasu and Akemashite Omedetou

Merii Kurisumasu!  Merry Christmas from Japan!  Akemashite Omedetou!  Happy New Year!  The 2016 holiday season is upon us.  Here are a few snapshots of our holiday in the East.Merry Christmas from Minoh!  This is Yuzuru, our Minoh City mascot, all lit up for the holiday.  This display is right outside of the Minoh Train Station.  He looks pretty cute. Merry Christmas from Bali!  The tree at left is on display in the reception area of a fancy hotel somewhere in the north part of Bali near Ubud.  We were taken here for lunch after our bike tour across the interior.  The tree at right is on display at a restaurant called Matahari in Jimbaran Beach.  The restaurant sits on the…

Read More

Changing Our Style – Bali Part 2

Monday, December 19 is officially the start of the kids’ winter break.  Everyone wanted to lay low today so we booked our driver for an excursion tomorrow and spent the day in Seminyak Square.  Our villa is nicely located about a 15 minute walk to the lively “downtown” area.  We are far enough away that it is very quiet, but close enough for a quick walk to eat and shop.  We just discovered the concept of the “escape room” games while we were in KL but didn’t have enough time to try it while there. So when we discovered an escape room game in Seminyak we added it to our to-do list.  The place we found is called Totem Room…

Read More

Holiday in Bali – Part 1

On Saturday, December 17 we got up early in the morning and made the trek to Kansai International Airport.  John learned from our Thanksgiving trip to KL that he wasn’t going to take any advice from me on what time we should leave for the airport.  He led the charge and we left an hour and a half earlier than before.  We had already dropped the cats off at the pet hotel on Friday night so we didn’t have to worry about them.  We flew Garuda Indonesia Airlines and landed at Bali Ngurah Rai International Airport, the most beautiful airport I’ve ever seen, in the evening. This was our first time flying on a nice Asian airline and I think…

Read More

Two Special Japanese Dinners

It has already been nearly three weeks since we’ve been back from Malaysia and a lot seems to have happened in that time.  Including I got a very bad cold and I wasn’t able to do much but lay around and think about all the things I felt I should be doing.  It’s almost Christmas and I have shopping, wrapping and shipping to do.  But I was so tired and achy I couldn’t even write much, let alone get up and shop.  So I’m catching up again. We returned from Malaysia on Sunday, November, 27.  The following Sunday, December 4, we had plans to take the Shinkansen (that’s the speedy Japanese bullet train) down south to Hiroshima prefecture to a…

Read More

Petronas Pewter & Hard Rock Caves

Our last full day in Malaysia is Saturday, November 26. After the long and exhausting day we had yesterday we all decided to sleep in. But then we kind of had to rush around for the rest of the day to fit in everything. I don’t think we got back to the apartment from our adventure at Inside Scoop until around 10:30pm. We all needed to pull the covers up over our eyes when the sun came up.  This photo is sadly the only one I took of our 3-bedroom apartment at the Nomad Bangsar Serviced Residences.  It was a good value for the rate and in a safe area. When we were all up and dressed we decided to…

Read More