My Adventure Abroad

Trying to Stay Awake at 1AM

It’s exactly 1:25 AM on Monday, May 1 in Japan.  But it is exactly 9:25 AM on Sunday, April 30 in California.  Tickets for the Broadway sensation HAMILTON at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles go on sale at exactly 10 AM PDT (pacific daylight time)… that’s in 35 minutes.  My chances of actually getting to buy online tickets is very slim, so it’s likely a waste of a night to stay up like this, but I have to try.  I am a huge Broadway musical fan.  I’ve been wanting to see Hamilton on Broadway for a long time.  But I haven’t been to New York City since Labor Day weekend 2001 (just a few days before 9/11 happened) when John…

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Japan’s Manhoru Art

Call it a treasure hunt or a scavenger hunt.  One of my favorite parts about wandering around Japan is looking for fancy manhole covers (manhoru in Japanese) in every new area of Japan that we visit.  The first intricate and brightly colored manhole cover I saw was in downtown Minoh.  The Minoh manhole features the red maple leaves and waterfall that this city is famous for.  It is a beautiful piece of public art!  Every time I step on them I am amazed all over again at how cool these things are. Up top, the featured manhole photo is also from Minoh.  Avalon just discovered this one recently.  It’s by the train station and I don’t know why we never…

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Guests and Gifts from Home

We’ve been busy lately.  On Tuesday, March 28 my parents arrived from Riverside, California for one week.  After they left we barely had enough time to get the laundry done before Avalon’s BFF and her mom arrived from Newport Beach, CA for one week.  Then, overlapping with Avalon’s friend’s stay, we were asked by our school to host two visiting high school students from Seoul, South Korea.  The Korean students are still with us but they are set to leave early tomorrow morning, which happens to be Sunday, April 16, Easter Sunday. My parents arrived with one suitcase full of goodies for us.  The one thing I really wanted they actually brought for me — American kitty litter!!!  The box…

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Sakura at Zouheikyoku

Sunday, April 16.  HAPPY EASTER! It’s Easter Sunday here in Japan, but still only Saturday the 15th in the US.  I heard that the Easter Bunny has to go to the US first, before going abroad so I told the kids they’d have to wait a bit longer for the Easter Bunny’s arrival.  He just doesn’t operate on Japanese time. We did go to Easter Sunday church service at Minoh International Church.  Afterwards, the church had a picnic lunch at a nearby park and all the kids got to play around and eat lunch. The church organized cookie decorating, egg coloring, games and an egg hunt for the younger kids.  A few of Avalon’s classmates were there and she was…

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Matsumoto-Jo

Saturday, March 25 is our last day at Hotel Khuls in Ichinose area, Shiga Kogen ski resort.  It has been a grand time!  John is torn between staying another night and going back because the snow is so awesome and he’s having such a great time.  Halyard went home yesterday so we asked him to take a taxi and pick up the cats at the pet hotel and bring them home.  So really, there’s nothing stopping us from another night away. One last delicious breakfast.  The food has been plentiful and yummy during our entire stay.  Some internet reviews complained about the selection but we (all 17 of us) thought it was terrific.  John and I and the kids decided…

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Snow Monkeys!

I so wanted to see Japan’s famous snow monkeys.  When we arrived in Japan I did not know where the snow monkeys lived or if we could see them.  I assumed they lived on Hokkaido where it is coldest, but when I told Mayumi I wanted to see the snow monkeys during our visit there she was surprised that they might live on Hokkaido.  Oh, gomen nasai (sorry)!  Bad guess.  They actually live in Nagano Prefecture.   There are several ski resort areas in Nagano, but one of the reasons I picked Shiga Kogen over the others is so that we would be closest to the snow monkey park. On Friday, March 24 we set out after breakfast.  It turns…

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Plowing Through Powder

Thursday, March 23 is a snowshoe adventure day!  Our friend Nadia doesn’t downhill ski so she’s been hanging around watching the kids and looking for things to do.  She wanted to go cross country skiing but it was difficult to find rental equipment and someone to guide us.  It seems there’s a competition going on that has sucked up all the cross country resources.  At last she was able to book a snowshoe expedition.  The snowshoe guide said she would meet us at our hotel lobby at 14:00pm.  That gave us some time to get in a few hours of skiing before lunch. The snow in Shiga Kogen has been amazing.  We’ve been so lucky with the new powder in late…

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Skiing Shiga Kogen

On Monday, March 20 we set off for Nagano, the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics.  The kids are on spring break for about 2 and a half weeks.  I looked at how to get from Osaka to Nagano about a half dozen different ways.  We settled on taking the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Osaka to Nagoya, which took only 50 minutes.  We barely made it though because John and Halyard had to take the cats back to the pet hotel in the morning and then they caught a taxi to the station.  I was driving the poor Japanese ticket lady crazy because I couldn’t decide which train to buy tickets for.  I wasn’t sure if John and Halyard were…

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Discovering Seoul

The boys are so lucky to have this year at Osaka International School.  The school organizes spring camps for the middle school and upper school grades.  They get to go with their classmates on field trips to fun places that would be on anyone’s tourist agenda.  This year, Kaiyo and his grade 8 classmates rode the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Hiroshima.  The trip cost 45,000 yen ($400) for 2 nights and 3 days, all inclusive except lunches.  They spent the first day at the atomic bomb museum and peace park.  In the evening they had a talk with a survivor of the atom bomb blast at their hotel.  They spent the second day on Miyajima Island, hiking, exploring and eating….

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Avalon’s NC Pen Pals

Avalon has made some new friends in Japan… even though they live over 7,000 miles apart and have never met!  Recently she received a packet of 15 letters sent by a 4th grade class from Ballentine Elementary School in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina.  They are Avalon’s new pen pals and they have an interest in learning about Japan!  Each student wrote Avalon a letter and she answered all of their questions in this blog post.  Before they wrote, they read some of our blog posts, namely the ones about the Cat Cafe, rice fields, trash and shoe rules.  So they had a lot of questions about those topics. Avalon also hand wrote a letter to the class, telling them a little…

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