Visit from the Seniors!
Since I haven’t written in a while, this week I am going to make something of a list, recapping the last two weeks, which was the entire visit from my Aunt, Uncle, and cousins, the Seniors. It was great to have them visit us here in Japan, and that we all had a lot of fun running all around the country and exploring so many cool new places!
The Seniors’ Visit!
2/18
Day 1 - The Seniors landed in Tokyo in the afternoon. We had already been there an entire day, so we went out for my birthday dinner at a fun cook-at-your-table place (yakiniku). (We loved Chef Miles making all of our food).
2/19
Day 2 - We all took the subway to a Tokyo neighborhood called Akihabara. We went to a super cool huge arcade there. It was really neat to see all of the cool Japanese-style arcade games. One interesting thing that we noticed at these arcades was the claw machines. All of the arcades had entire floors of the building dedicated to only hundreds of these games!
2/20
Day 3 - We all took the subway and visited the Meiji Shrine which was super cool and beautiful. We had an amazing 20-course omakase dinner at Sushi Tokyo Ten which was delicious. It may have been the coolest dinner experience I have ever experienced. It was 20 delicious courses of sushis, sashimis, and soups that were so perfectly made.
2/21
Day 4 - We went over to the Sensō-ji Shrine which was an absolutely beautiful building. One of the main structures was a piece of super impressive architecture that looked like five Japanese-style pavilions stacked on top of each other to make an extremely tall building. It looked like it could fall over and collapse any minute. We went to an awesome okonomiyaki place for lunch. A super cool experience to have unique pancakes made on a grill at your table. Totally a fun last day in Tokyo (for the Seniors).
2/22
Day 5 - That was a travel day. We took the bullet train from Tokyo in the morning. It moves at about 175 mph! After about two hours we stopped in Kyoto. We had to get up pretty early in the morning so we decided to take it easy for the rest of the day.
2/23
Day 6 - Our first big activity in Kyoto was taking a walking tour around a big food market called Nishiki Market and we had some really good food. We also went to a super neat cat cafe near the market.
2/24
Day 7 - We climbed up the mountain that had the Fushimi Inari shrine since it was so close to our Airbnb where we were staying. There were some super cool views of the entire city of Kyoto and the surrounding mountains from the top of the hike.
2/25
Day 8 - We subwayed over to the imperial palace in Kyoto. It’s not actually where the emperor lives anymore but it was still super beautiful with all of the gardens. We then ventured over to the samurai and ninja museum and we learned some pretty neat things. Did you know that ninjas were poor farmers that were hired by the government? We then went to a super fun karaoke and then went to a shabu shabu place for dinner.
2/26
Day 9 - That was a travel day from Kyoto to Nozawa Onsen. After the hour-and-a-half shinkansen (bullet train) ride we took a walk in our new town, and we played in the snow a bunch. We then found a delicious dinner spot and had a great time getting used to our new surroundings.
2/27
Day 10- We drove to and hiked up a mountain to get to Jigokudani Park. It is the only place in the world where you can see snow monkeys that love the natural hot springs. It was a super amazing thing to see that not many people get to do.
2/28
Day 11 - We were up bright and early so that we could get as much skiing in as we could. It had been snowing so much making the conditions perfect. It was a super fun, full day of skiing on an absolutely beautiful mountain.
2/29
Day 12 - Our last full day, we got in all of the skiing that we could, which was super fun, and we relaxed in the natural hot springs of the town after all of the hard work.
2/30
Day 13- We all took the bullet train back to Tokyo and we said goodbye there since that is where their flight was.
It was super sad to see the Seniors go; we had so much fun with them all around Japan. We are now really starting to settle down here in Kyoto since we are staying for about three weeks. Our house is super nice and our neighborhood is super cool. It is exciting to think that we will be here for three weeks!
