My birthday from 2024

I’m back! I was on such a roll before and then fell off again. But I really want to get this up ahead of my birthday this year, so here we go!

So I had to go to school on my birthday last year, as usual. But I made peanut butter chocolate brownies to take in to share with my colleagues in the part timers teachers room (I’m not part time, but us ALTs get thrown in there, lol). I explained the tradition of bringing in your own cake on your birthday to the Japanese teachers and they very much appreciated my efforts, haha. I may or may not have made my students sing to me during our classes.

After work was finished, I headed to Toranomon to meet Shyam. He had, of course, made sneaky reservations at a fancy restaurant. It’s called The Blue Room, and it’s nestled on the 31st floor of a hotel called The Tokyo EDITION (a fancy 5 star place not too far from Roppongi). The restaurant’s interior was gorgeous! Very much living up to the colour in its name. The view of the city scape from our window side table was dazzling!

We ordered drinks and then we had a set meal gradually brought to us. Before the food started though, Shyam managed to make me cry with my presents. Or rather one of them. It was a light up frame that commemorated the date and place where we first met in 2019 with coordinates. Very sentimental and the waiter did bring our first course over with me blubbering all over the table ^^; Shyam also got me this gorgeous fox print bag.

The food was brought to us at a comfortable pace. There was an absolutely exquisite pumpkin soup. I enjoyed it so much that Shyam was calculating how to make it at home while he was eating it (he has since successfully made it!). There was a cheese board, complete with apricots and honey. A chicken (or pork, I honestly can’t remember or tell from the photo ^^; ) dish that came on a leaf! (Shyam had a vegetarian option, which was pasta). There was a side of potato wedges. And then a strawberry shortcake birthday cake to finish. It was all delicious!

What a wonderful experience it was! It’s nearly a year on, but thank you Shyam for always going above and beyond to make me feel special. Hopefully I won’t be writing about this year’s birthday a year later, haha. With that in mind, I will endeavor to be back very soon with the next installment!

Summer vacation 2024

So this latest catch up blog will be about last year’s summer vacation. So this year’s summer vacation is currently in motion and I am halfway across the world back in the U.K. keeping mostly busy (except for this weekend since I’m pet sitting), but last year we didn’t really do all that much. So I’m just going to write some anecdotes from a mostly uneventful 6 weeks with some photos thrown in here and there.

Shyam and I are currently very lucky and get a full 6 weeks off from our teaching jobs over the summer. Unfortunately, if you stay in Japan, it’s very difficult to do much because of the ridiculous temperatures in the summer. So there is always a lot of staying home in the AC or going somewhere inside with AC. Another good way to stay cool is to eat ice-cream, and I found a new favorite last year.

Of course I’d had Coolish before, but the peach flavor was a whole other level of delicious and refreshing. 100% recommend it!

During the beginning of the vacation, Shyam’s friend arrived from the UK with a bag of goodies for us. He had very kindly also brought my requested jar of Branston Pickle but it didn’t survive the journey and all our goodies were showered in brown pickle juice ^^; Luckily no damage was done. Especially not to the special gift sent to me via Shyam’s friend from one of my fellow BTS ARMY! Handmade and awesome!!

Just into August we went on a special lunch date for one of Shyam’s writing assignments. We went to a vegan sushi restaurant in Shibuya. It was a specialist restaurant where they only served one dish. A vegan sushi platter, which they had spent years honing to make it exciting and delicious and completely vegan. It looked fantastic! I enjoyed nearly all of them, but the fake egg one didn’t agree with me for some reason. The ambiance of the place was lovely and the staff were friendly.

A few days later we went down to Numazu to see our friend Audrey and her two little boys. Again, it was very hot, so we spent most of the time chilling at her apartment. We did go to the fish market and have ice-creams though, which was fun. Shyam cooked dinner for us all and the two little boys loved it, bless them.

Towards the end of the summer, I met one of my old Japanese colleagues in Yokohama. We had a very nice lunch out, had a walk by the bay, and then ate sweets with a nice view. It was a lovely day out and catch up. I miss Yokohama sometime.

And that was most of the highlights of last year’s summer vacation. This year’s (if I ever get to it) will be much more interesting, haha. Oh and one thing we did to while away the time in the AC was play the Switch game Overcooked. Would not recommend as it’s very stressful and could be relationship ending, haha.

Okay, that’s it for this time. Next post will be about my birthday last year!

My first escape room + BTS VR!

I’m back straight away with a new blog. I’m really going to try and catch up this time. For real! So the next notable event in my life last year was when I had a day out with some of my BTS Army friends. I tried an escape room for the first time and then we went to this special BTS event afterwards.

The escape room was next to Tsukiji Market. It took us ages to find it as it was kind of hidden away inside a coffee shop. You had to go through to the back and up some rickety old stairs. Very on brand lol. We did a bank robbery room. It was actually pretty hard and if not for my two friends, I think I’d have failed it haha. It was very exciting and I guess I shouldn’t actually share any details here because of spoilers. Just in case anyone reads this and is planning on going (small chance I know, but still). But suffice to say there were lots of cool puzzles and some surprising effects included. We just barely completed it within the time limit, and took a celebratory photo.

After the escape room, we headed to Tennozu Isle where the BTS event was happening. It was a special exhibition, which included a VR section where you got to watch a special BTS concert video in VR. We met up with another friend and then the four of us went in. So they had a huge exhibition space. Predictably, I don’t actually remember the details well (hence the need to catch up with this blog! ^^; ). So I’ll just add some photos.

The VR was amazing! We all filed into this room that had several lines of tables with VR headsets . It was soooo good! As a fan, having the boys basically in your face while singing was excellent, haha. I’d definitely like to do that again sometime.

After the exhibition we went to Tokyo station where there was a special pop up store for BTS’s oldest member, Jin’s Line character, RJ. It was in celebration of him being discharged from the military. It was very cute and I think we all bought something, haha.

After that we found a Korean restaurant (of course) to have some dinner. It was pretty funny as we ordered samgyeopsal as usual, but in this restaurant it came as a spicy soup. I can’t eat spicy food, so we had to cook some meat on the side of the pan away from the spicy soup. It made for a rather funny photo.

It was a nice meal despite that and we enjoyed our time together before we all had to go our separate ways. It was a super fun day. I love hanging out with my Army friends.

That’s another blog done. The next one will be about Summer 2024. See you soon!

Our May trip to Disney Sea

Okay, I’m finally back! Got a bit lost for a while there, but I’m really going to try to catch up this time. I’ve let myself get more than a year behind again. But it’s summer vacation now, so I have time and hopefully motivation to whizz through these blog posts. First up we have that long ago teased trip to Disney Sea!

So, the popular thing to do when going to Disney is to get there super early, hours before the park even opens. But we are so not here for that kind of thing, and happily ambled up at like 10:30am. It was great! It was a Tuesday (we both somehow had the same random day off from school, which never happens) and so we skipped all the weekend/holiday crowds. Don’t get me wrong, it was still pretty busy, but manageable. Plus we had already decided we weren’t interested in queuing for the big rides.

We had a little walk around the area near the entrance first, soaking in the atmosphere, before heading to our first ride, which was 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. This might have been the longest queue we did, though it was only around 20 minutes or so. It was a tame, adventure kind of ride. Kind of forgettable since I barely remember even going on it. After that we headed to Agrabah, which I was super excited about because Aladdin is one of my favorite Disney movies.

Here we got our first taste of some Disney themed food. Specifically ice-creams. We also went on our second ride, which was the carousel. I chose a classic genie to ride on, haha. Then Shyam played an old style game to try and win a shiny prize but it was a lot harder than it looked of course. I still got an Aladdin pin badge though!

After that we went to the U.S. Steamship area and got some lunch at one of the restaurants there. I remember we had to wait a bit to be seated and it was kind of crazy inside, but the food wasn’t too bad and the prices weren’t particularly elevated. After that we went on the Aquatopia ride. It’s a ride on water where the cars go along a track and shake and spin randomly. Not the best choice after eating, haha. But it was still fun!

Oh I should mention here that pre lunch, we had this chocolate churro thing that I managed to drop down my white t-shirt. The stain was not good and I was forced to buy a Disney t-shirt to change into. Hence the fact I have a different t-shirt on in the above photo. Top tip, don’t wear white to Disney Sea, haha.

I’m not 100 percent sure about the order here, but we also rode Flounder’s Flying Fish Coaster, which is a cute mini rollercoaster, and we did the Venetian Gondolas, which were a really nice experience. The guys operating the boats were really funny and made it very entertaining. Plus the scenery really was like a mini Venice. It was very convincing.

We headed over to the Toy Story area after that but didn’t do any rides as the queues were too long. We found some illusion mirrors though, which were fun. Then we split up for a bit as Shyam wanted to go buy some mystery present (more on that later) and I wanted to ride the Indiana Jones Adventure ride. Going as a single rider made the queue sooo much more manageable. It was pretty fun. Easily the most exciting ride I’d done there.

We met back up again with Shyam being all mysterious. We headed back to the a Steamboat area again and got a couple of cocktails. One of Disney Sea’s positive points for a lot of people compared to Disneyland is that you can buy alcohol, lol. It was quite nice just enjoying a drink by the water. We then took some more photos and a final little walk round, before deciding we’d had enough. We left about 6:30pm and that was enough time for us. We had a nice, super chill 8 hours or so in Disney Sea.

As a final note, the super mysterious present Shyam went to get was a specially engraved Disney Sea photo frame. It was a lovely surprise.

Okay, that’s Disney Sea finished! Next up will be a blog about my day out with my BTS Army friends 🙂

Spring trip to Kawaguchiko

I’m back! A bit later than planned, but lets get back on track! This post will be about our Spring vacation trip last year to Kawaguchiko. We stayed there for one night and it was sooo nice! You might have seen it in the news a bit last year. Many tourists were creating havoc around the Lawson near the station as some TikTok/Instagram person made the view of Mount Fuji with the Lawson in famous. The local officials tried to stop it by putting up a net. There was this whole thing that was kind of ridiculous. Anyway, rest assured I didn’t take this shot. I got some much cooler shots of Mount Fuji instead.

We hopped on a train early on April 1st. It took about three hours to get there (if you take the coach from Shinjuku I think it is slightly quicker, traffic pending, but I think they were all fully booked when we tried to book one). We arrived around 11am and went for a little wander. We found a small pizza place we wanted to try for lunch and saw they opened for only two hours (12-2), so we headed there for just before 12 because the Google reviews said they were popular. It was a good decision because while we were first in, it quickly filled up after we were seated. The pizza was delicious!

After that we headed to the Mt. Fuji Panoramic Ropeway, which is next to Lake Kawaguchi. There was a fairly sizeable queue, but we expected it. It didn’t take too long before we were getting in the cable car and quickly ascending up the mountain. It was pretty steep, as you can kind of see in the photo below.

The views up the top were absolutely breathtaking! Mt. Fuji was mostly clear and looking majestic in all its snowcapped glory. Plus the view on the other side of the lakes was equally awe-inspiring. There is a rabbit shrine up there, a lover’s bell, and also a giant swing that you can pay to swing in to see the view whilst in motion (we didn’t partake though because queues!).

After queuing again to get back down, we headed to a sake brewery that we had passed on the way from the station. Neither of us are big drinkers, but it’s nice to try something a bit different every now and then. They did a tasting there where you pay a nominal amount of money and can go try some different sake and umeshu (plum wine). It was very interesting!

After this we hopped on a bus that took us around Kawaguchi lake and got off on the opposite side where there is a museum called the Kawaguchiko Forest Museum. Because it was the middle to latter part of the afternoon, we got a huge discount to go in (they have various performances earlier in the day). It was sooo interesting! It wasn’t busy either, which was great. The museum held lots of old instruments. But there was also a European inspired garden, which was beautiful. As well as various artworks and installations. A real all rounder of an attraction. You could easily spend many hours here, I think.

We took the bus back after this and headed back to go check into our cheap and cheerful business hotel for the night. We managed to get some more cool snaps of Mt Fuji on the way.

After resting a bit in our hotel room, we headed out to get some dinner. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but Shyam is vegetarian, so sometimes our choices are a little limited. But we saw a Sushiro (staple conveyor belt sushi place all over Japan) on our walk to the hotel, so we headed back there. I said the fateful words ‘I don’t think it’s that busy’ as we neared it. It was very busy! But actually we didn’t have to wait too long before we were seated. Then we got to order some interesting dishes. It’s very different to Yo! Sushi back home, haha.

After a very satisfying dinner, we went back to the hotel and chilled before bed. We were very tired, haha.

The next morning we headed out to a herb garden that was enroute back towards the lakes. It’s kind of a bit out of the way and maybe lesser known about, so it was super quiet there. The gardens were beautiful and they also had a Mt Fuji viewing deck with all these wonderful purpose built photo spots (places to set up your phone to take photos), so Shyam and I actually managed to get some decent photos together for once, which was nice.

After we finished our fun photoshoot, we walked down to the lake and got on a bus. This time we stayed on it until we got to the next lake, Lake Saiko (there are five lakes in total, which is why the area is called ‘Fuji 5 Lakes’). Our first stop was at the Saiko Bat Cave. You pay your money, get given a hard hat, and then hike into the woods until you eventually reach the cave. Sadly didn’t see any bats, but it was quite an exciting cave experience. I wouldn’t recommend trying to explore deep into the low ceiling part like I did. I realised very quickly I’m too old to walk stooped like that for too long these days.

We stopped off in the gift shop for a bat magnet and a snack whilst we waited for the next bus to come. Then we went a couple of stops round to the Saiko Iyashi-no-sato Nanba (a traditional Japanese village). You pay a small entrance fee and then there is a large cluster of traditional Japanese houses and huts. Each has a different attraction inside. There were different kinds of crafting (some of which you can do a workshop in), actual model traditional houses, teashops, sweet shops. A bit of everything honestly. It was fascinating.

After the traditional village my memory is slightly foggy, but I know the buses were being kind of awkward. So we got one so far and then ended up going on a pretty long walk round a large chunk of Kawaguchi lake. It was tiring but really beautiful. We got some more lovely views of Mt. Fuji, got to walk through a long tunnel, and see many different lakeside views. It was definitely worth it! I’d love to rent bikes and cycle round it next time.

When we eventually got back to the station area (we didn’t walk the whole way, we took a bus from about halfway round), we found this out of the way okonomiyaki restaurant tucked behind the station area called Zoo. We got seats at the counter and the chef was a bit of a character. It was kind of a locals place and I think we were fairly lucky to get in because plenty of people got turned away. He cooked our okonomiyaki and soba in front of us. It was delicious!

We left there feeling extremely full, headed back to the station via the lockers to pick up our belongings, and began the long train journey back home. All in all it was a brilliant, very memorable trip! I would recommend at least an overnight trip here to explore the area. You could easily do two or three nights. Next post will be all about our trip to Disney Sea!

White Day 2024

So I’m fairly sure I’ve written about White Day before, but just in case… In Japan, Valentine’s Day (still on February 14th) is a day for women to give chocolate to men. This also extends to giving chocolate to family members, friends, and even co-workers. Then a month later, on March 14th, the men reciprocate. Though, traditionally, this means giving back a gift (not necessarily chocolate) that is worth three times as much money.

Anyway, Shyam and I have kind of half adopted the Japanese way of things for Valentine’s. So I’ll make a card and buy chocolates on Valentine’s Day (maybe go for a meal too but not always). Then on White Day, Shyam tends to bake me something and take me out for a nice dinner somewhere. So today’s update will be about the awesome place he took me for White Day’s dinner last year.

We went to a restaurant in Shinjuku called Flower Wall Mone. The concept is that they have digital art playing on the wall as you eat. The place is also beautifully decked out in flowers. It’s basically the perfect spot to go on a romantic date. But also great for like a girls meal out too. I can’t upload videos on here, so I’ll try my best to show what it was like with photos instead.

It was moving digital art. So the bunnies would be jumping across the wall, the cherry blossoms were blowing in the wind, etc. It felt really magical in the moment. That was the real gem of the restaurant, but I did enjoy the food too. There was a pie in a mug that was a fun dish to order. I honestly can’t remember what was in the pie now, but I do remember it was delicious. We also had garlic bread, which always gives a restaurant many plus points in my book as it’s rare to find on menus over here.

I’m sure we ate other things too but I don’t have photos of them so I don’t remember ^^; It was a really lovely experience though. I also got to choose a small bouquet of flowers to take home, which I think was a special White Day thing the restaurant was doing. I’ll leave you with a photo of the two of us our waitress took for us. Next time will be a much longer entry about our trip to Kawaguchiko last Spring.

A birthday trip to the planetarium

Crazy I know, but I’m already back with another update! This post will take us further into January 2024.

So Shyam’s birthday is January 15th, and since this was the first time I had an oven available to me for his birthday, I attempted to bake him a cake. Now, please bear in mind I’ve never really cooked a big cake before. I’m proficient at cupcakes, okay at loaf cakes, so-so at traybakes, but I’ve never made a big sponge before. And technically this time, I still didn’t. I basically used my chocolate cupcake recipe and dumped it in a small sponge cake sized tin and baked it until it was cooked through, haha. And then badly decorated it. But he liked it! (And yes we still had our Christmas tree up! It was my first time in 5 years in Japan to have one, so I was reluctant to part with it).

I don’t actually remember what we did on the day except for birthday cake and presents (ie. there are no photos to remind me), but I’m sure we had some nice food or something ^^; But one of the presents I bought him was tickets to the planetarium, which we didn’t end up doing until January 28th. There are a bunch of these planetariums dotted around here, but we went to the one in Yokohama. This was a special performance running at the time called ‘Songs for the Planetarium’.

So we arrived in plenty of time and indulged in the special (and kind of pricey) snacks at the cafe there. They had themed drinks and doughnuts. The drinks were nice, but honestly the doughnuts looked miles better than they tasted, haha.

Then we headed into the planetarium. It was like a cinema screen layout really. Standard seats laid out in rows and then the premium seats at the front, which is what I had plumped for. Now these seats, as you can see below, were more like beds than seats. We felt very special to occupy one of them, haha. We posed for some photos and then the show was about to start, so we got our audio guides set up and got comfy.

Unfortunately I don’t remember the details of the show now and can’t actually find any info about it anywhere. But basically it was a series of different stories set to specific music and played out on the starry ceiling. Our audio guides gave it to us in English, but honestly I was more interested in just listening to the music and watching the pictures. I do remember one of the stories making me cry. It was a really lovely experience.

After the show we had a little look in the gift shop and I bought Shyam a pocket watch and we bought some special planetarium hand soap (which we still haven’t actually used, haha). And we took one or two more photos of the lobby area.

And that was that. Sorry it was an entry sketchy on the details. This is why I’m trying so hard to catch up so I’m not writing about events from the distant past ^^; I’ll be back, hopefully very soon, to write about last year’s White Day meal.

A winter hike in Nikko

I lapsed in my catch up blogs again ^^; but I am truly determined this time. I’m going to try and update 2-3 times a week, then I’ll finally finally be caught up. So this blog takes us back in time to January 5th, 2024. My friend, Morgan, suggested we go on a day hike to Nikko, so go we did, despite my being not at my healthiest for most of the day.

My alarm woke me up early on January 5th and I immediately had doubts about the planned daytrip. I was still somewhat in the throes of a GERD/Gastritis flare-up. I don’t think I’ve gone into detail in here about that diagnosis, but basically sometimes I get double whammied with tummy symptoms and it’s pretty rotten. The thing with living with a chronic illness, though, is that flare ups happen often and without prejudice, and sometimes you just really want to power through so you can live your life, y’know. So I took a deep breath and decided to push through.

I packed a lunch and met Morgan at the train station. I explained my flare up situation to him and he was still happy to go. So off we went to Kitasenju station to get the limited express train out to Nikko. We encountered our first problem here. The tickets for our desired train were all sold out, so we had to go for the next one, which I think was an hour later. I had a chance to back out again here, which I nearly took, but luckily I didn’t. So we bought our tickets and then set in to wait. I grabbed a chamomile tea from the Starbucks at the station and that helped to settle my stomach a little bit.

We eventually got on a train and we were on our way up to Nikko. The limited express train takes about an hour and a half. It’s a fun journey as you watch the urban landscape gradually change to fields and mountains. We arrived later than planned. It was already nearly midday, but we didn’t let that deter us. We immediately went to catch the bus that would take us to the start point of our hike. Now, the bus was the part I was most worried about re. my tummy, because it goes up these ridiculous winding paths. But, happily, it was okay! I even enjoyed the journey a bit.

We got off the bus at Ryuzu Cascades and found our first scenic spot of the day. We also went into the gift shop there to ask the owner if it was necessary for bear bells this time of year. She said it was safe since they were all hibernating, so from here we began our hike, taking many photos of the waterfall as we past it.

The early part of the hike took us through a very wintery, barren looking area. Bare trees, sad looking grass, and a snow covered path. But it all felt magical to us. Snow is a rare treat for us city dwellers. Something we have to travel to see. It was a bright sunny day and we soon shed coats and scarves as we walked. Also, the fresh air and exercise was doing me the world of good as my tummy seemed to finally be calming down.

At around 2pm we stopped for lunch. We found a little wooden seating area with a nice view (I’m sure the view would have been nicer outside the dead winter months, haha). I managed some actual food for the first time that day (onigiri).

The next part of our hike took us along a boardwalk, which was also partly snow-covered. We got to a place called Senjogahara Marshland. Apparently it’s known as ‘the battlefield’ because there was a legendary battle there between the god of Mt. Akagi and the god of Mt. Nantai. I’ll include a photo of the very informative board explaining about it.

After the brightness of the Marshlands we headed into the decidedly darker, colder confines of a thick woodland area. The coats went back on and we started making each other jump with the quiet, eerie surroundings. Then Morgan jumped for real as several monkeys suddenly crossed the path ahead of us. I was actually the brave one for once and led us on despite the monkeys (they just minded their own business). So we continued on our way through the dark dark wood, hehe.

And eventually we happened upon another magnificent waterfall. This was the Yudaki Cascades. This was more than 70m tall and crashing down into the river below. We heard the roar of it way before we saw it. We got to climb up the trail directly alongside it, which was really cool (and rather tiring, haha).

Our reward for the tough hike up the side of the waterfall was a ginormous lake that was completely frozen over. This was Lake Yunoko. The next part of our hike took us round by the side of this huge lake. We got some glorious photos of it. Also, with it now closing in on 4pm, it was getting cold, so even my hat went back on by this point. I was very glad to have brought all the winter clothes with me I don’t usually use in Tokyo.

Once we got to the other side of the lake, we reached the Yumoto Spa resort. We finally saw many other people here. On the way we had barely seen anybody. It was still pretty quiet though. Most of the spas seemed to be shut. Maybe because we were still technically in the New Year’s holiday period.

There is an area here that is the source of the hot spring water. It’s full of these little huts that I guess are pumping the water (I’ve no idea honestly). But it smelled very strongly of sulphur. Not a pleasant smell, I can assure you. We also saw deer and monkeys in this area, which was cool.

We took a bus back around 5pm. All the way back the long and winding roads to semi-civilisation. We then had a little bit of time to kill before our train back to Tokyo, so grabbed some yummy hot soba in this cute little restaurant near the station. Then we hopped onto the train, gratefully clutching hot cans of drink from the vending machine and settled in for the journey back home.

Overall it was a lovely if tiring day out. It started out not great for me but the exercise and fresh air really helped a lot. Since then I’ve realised that exercise is usually great treatment for many of the symptoms I experience, and this trip was the beginning of that. Thank you to Morgan for organising this lovely day out. Sorry it took me over a year to blog about it ^^;

Christmas 2023

I had a pretty sociable, busy Christmas in 2023. It was somewhat spread out on the days leading up to the big day. On December 21st, Shyam and I hosted a Christmas party together for the first time at our own place. He made most of the food, as always, haha. But I contributed with my usual mince pies, as well as the apparently popular apple crumble and custard. It was a very eclectic group of people and everyone had a great time!

I didn’t take many photos unfortunately, but above are Shyam’s charcuterie board and my mince pies. There were also two chickens, Shyam’s famous roast potatoes, carrots, etc. Always a good spread in our house! Hehe. Oh also, I made an origami wreath for our front door. I used to make them for my office door at my old job in the UK.

Two days later, we attended another Christmas party at a friend’s place. They lived in a nice, spacious apartment in Odaiba, with lovely views that included Mount Fuji. I might have stood out on their balcony for longer than would be advisable in the low winter temperatures, to admire said view. Many different people attended this party also. We had a good mix of food (I can’t remember what and I have no photos, alas). I do remember that one of the activities was gingerbread men decorating, which caused lots of hilarity, though I wasn’t very good at it, as referenced below ^^;

On December 25th, as we’d already had lots of Christmas food at the two parties, we decided to go out for Christmas dinner. There aren’t many options in Tokyo for traditional Christmas dinner, so we just went for something we wanted instead. We chose Sizzler because we knew there would be a Christmas atmosphere, we really like their cheese toast, and they have excellent apple crumble in the dessert buffet. I booked us a table at the one in Kichijoji, which allowed us to have a lovely walk around Inokashira Park before dinner. It was a lovely afternoon/evening.

And then on Boxing Day, we went on an amazing afternoon tea cruise across Tokyo Bay. It was one of Shyam’s presents to me. It was a 50 minute cruise, although we were boarded well in advance of the departure time. We had a table reserved in the Four Seasons lounge on board, where they served us afternoon tea with unlimited tea. It was so lovely drinking tea and eating cake whilst watching the view constantly change as we sailed around the bay.

After we had had our fill of tea and cake, we left our bags at our table and headed up on deck to see unobstructed views of the bay. It was cold outside but so lovely to feel the breeze on our faces and have a laugh as we took some silly photos of each other.

We had a nice surprise upon re-entering the ship from the deck. A lady was setting up in a kind of foyer area and she was going to sing some opera. We had no idea this was going to happen. She personally encouraged us to take a seat. There were about twelve or so chairs lined up, so we quickly claimed two. Shyam is a big fan of operas, and I definitely enjoy it, and she was fantastic! Many more people stopped and claimed the remaining seats or remained standing to watch her performance. It really capped off a truly brilliant hour or so on the ship.

This entry is nearly over. We didn’t do too much on New Years. We just met two of Shyam’s friends at the Showa era izakaya we like, Hanbey’s, and then were in bed well before midnight, haha. The next entry will be about an epic daytrip I took with my friend, Morgan on January 5th.

Autumnal trip to Karuizawa

On November 11th 2023, I took a shinkansen from Tokyo to Karuizawa to spend the night in the the mountains with (some of) the same group of friends I went to Korea with in the summer. BTS is a music group with the power to bring people together, and through them I’ve made so many great friends and get to experience so many things I wouldn’t otherwise get the chance to do. I’m forever grateful for that.

So this time we decided to rent an Airbnb for the night and enjoy the autumn leaves together in Nagano prefecture. I arrived a bit later than the others as I had a hospital appointment in the morning, but the shinkansen soon whizzed me there to join up with them. They had hired a couple of cars, so I got picked up from the station and then we went to a supermarket to go stock up on food for the night.

This was my first view after getting off the train:

After we’d raided the supermarket we drove to our accommodation for the night. It was a cute cottage halfway up a mountain. There was a wood burner inside and all the other amenities we needed. One of our members immediately decorated the room to make it fit for BTS ARMY, haha.

We cooked up a bunch of food, had some nice wine and a glass of soju or three, haha, and just generally had a lovely evening relaxing and goofing off a bit. It’s over a year ago already, so I don’t remember details well sadly. This is why I need to get up to date with this blog. I can’t even remember the sleeping arrangements in this place. But I do know we had a great time.

The next morning we had breakfast and then cleaned up and headed out. We got a bunch of nice photos from nearby the Airbnb.

We drove to the Usui pass and visited the Usuitoge Kumano Shrine. From what I remember it was a fairly typical shrine. Lots of stairs to climb, etc. But also, for some reason, a pink door in the middle of the woods, haha.

We headed into Karuizawa town centre after that, where we got some interesting food and visited a few more points of interest.

A lovely night away soon had to come to an end though and we all gradually parted ways. I took the shinkansen home, which in itself is quite a treat. I know in this blog and the last I took two shinkansen, but it’s not a regular occurrence usually because it’s pretty expensive. I hope I can spend some more quality time with this group of friends, but it’ll be difficult since one friend has moved back to the US, sadly.

Will be back soon with a blog for Christmas 2023. Getting there! ^^;