Monday 30 May 2016

Japan, day 6

Our last day in Japan.  We woke up to have a moon stone hunt in the garden.
Breakfast in the room. Another elaborate fair.

 An Ito speciality.  Mommy and Daddy said it was nice but we were happy with seaweed and rice.
Onsen marathon continued right until we minute we checked out.
The beautiful gardens in the hotel ground.


We took the costal scenic route back to Tokyo.  Checked out a few coastal onsen towns on the way.
Back to Hong Kong and absolutely knackered.  I even fell asleep while we waited for our bags. Sign for a good trip I think!

Japan, day 5

The next morning we wasted no time to get to the patio to take in that spectacular view. It was such a clear and sunny day too.
I made sure the water temperature was good.
 And we all jumped in! It wasn't even breakfast time yet.
Finally Mommy dragged us to breakfast.  Talk about breakfast with a view!
The breakfast spread was also very interesting.  Jessica didn't really like fish first thing in the morning but Mommy was happy to gobble it all up.
We used the hot tub again after breakfast before we checked out.  Once on the road we decided we wanted to actually go up to Mount Fuji.
Viewing station 4 was as close as we could get to that day.  We weren't allowed to use the walking trails sadly.
We were very happy nonetheless, once we found some snow.
 More snow on our drive down.

After our descent we decided to check out Yamanakako, another famous lake in the area .  It's somewhat similar with Kawaguchiko. We found another ramen shop for a quite lunch stop before we head towards Izu.
Our next stop is in Ito in the Izu peninsula. Very different scenery from our room and we loved to be able to run around in our little Japanese garden.


Tea in our room.
Loved the kimono in this hotel.


Dinner in room.  Another fabulous meal with lots of local produce.

Japan, day 4

Today we were to leave Tokyo.  It had been fun but it was time to explore other places.  Mommy went to pick up the rental car and thanks to Google Map she managed to get back to the hotel (not without drama though) to get us.  Driving in Tokyo city was not the easiest but we managed.  Our next destination:  the Suntory Brewery in Musashino.  It took a bit longer than we had expected but we got there at the end.
The tour was very interesting, even for us kids.
 And we got to do some tasting at the end.   We liked the Suntory apple juice quite a lot, and we even tried green tea!


Not too sure about the beer though.

There are always props for a photo opportunity in Japan and we took advantage of them of course.
After the tour we found a quick ramen shop to have some lunch and continued our journey towards Mount Fuji.  Our next hotel was at Lake Kawaguchiko.  And sure enough the view from the lake and our room was breathtaking!
We didn't know what to do - explore the cute Japanese rooms and furniture first - or use the hot tub and enjoy the view?
In no time we jumped into the onset pool.
We also got to dress in Japanese costumes for dinner.

Look at the spread for dinner!  It took us 2 hours to eat everything.

Someone enjoyed her dessert.
When we got back to our room the beds were made - it was very exciting to sleep on tatami mats for the first time!
Beautiful view of the lake at night, according to Mommy and Daddy, who drank wine in the hot tub while we were sleeping.   What a special place!

Japan, day 3

We made some pretty cool postcards in the room (we woke early but we didn't want mommy and daddy to hear us from next door).
Today was our big day - Disney!  The drive there was spectacular.
 Yay!
 The place was packed solid.  Not sure whether it was a good thing that we had pre-purchased tickets and therefore got to go in and spend the day walking around with the crowd.  It was hopeless to get on any rides.  Fast passes were given for 9:30pm already and there was no way we would have lasted that long.
 We went on 2 rides and watched both the parades!
 The songs were quite catchy and we were dancing along.

 We walked to Tomorrow Land just to have a look around.  No chance of getting on the rides there.
 Time to blow this joint.
 As we were leaving we ran into Snow White!  Somehow we managed to battle through the crowd and got to her.
 We spoke and hugged.  It was special.

We got back to the hotel to have a rest while Daddy went off to the fishing shops again.  We then decided to do some retail therapy and got a few Little Twin Stars merchandise, like you do in Tokyo.  It was fun!
Dinner time we all voted to go back to the BBQ restaurant.  Mommy did not object I think she liked the draft Sapporo, which happened to be half priced too!  A perfect day for everyone!