New apartment, new job

So it’s been a while. I went to update a couple of times a while ago and Word Press was being weird. But, better late than never! I’m actually typing this on my brand spanking new iPad (with cheap keyboard attached) from a cafe. So yay for being able to write whilst on the go now. Last time I said I’d be back with a blog about two big changes that happened in my life in February/March last year. So here goes!

So first, I moved to Tokyo! After four years living in Yokohama, I decided it was time for a change. Also, Shyam and I wanted to finally move in together. So we started the long, difficult, expensive process of moving apartments in Japan. We found an estate agent that catered for foreigners and had a lovely agent that spoke perfect English. She took us round several apartments. We thought we found the perfect place but our application was rejected. Apparently because we weren’t married. So back to the drawing board.

We were on a deadline as the lease on my place was up on the 4th weekend of February and I didn’t want to pay another renewal fee (an extra month’s rent!). So we quickly scheduled more viewings and eventually found a place. It was a pretty amusing viewing experience. Our agent couldn’t find any parking nearby, so ended up parking on the side of the road and daren’t leave the car. So Shyam and I went up and viewed the property alone. It was already dark and there was no electricity in the apartment, so we had to look around with the flashlights on our phones.

It was big! The space inside was much better than anything we’d seen in our price range before. It’s a 2DK, which means two rooms, plus a diner/kitchen room. The two rooms were good sizes and the diner/kitchen was long and very spacious! There was also a built in dishwasher, which amused us very much. The only really bad thing about the interior was the bathroom sink. It looks like a mini urinal. Very bizarre and not really useable, but we make do. The location is also perfect! A bus stop right outside, 15 mins to two different train stations, a huge park opposite, and loads of nearby options for supermarkets and restaurants/cafes.

So we immediately asked our agent to put an application in for us. This time it went through and we were soon starting the mammoth task of moving in. Because we were both still working at our Yokohama based schools until the end of March, Shyam decided to stay at his place for an extra three weeks until school finished. I didn’t have that luxury, so I had to commute a bit further than usual for a month, but it was okay. I found a reasonably priced moving company and got all my stuff boxed up and moved easily enough, including bed, washing machine, fridge, etc.

Shyam didn’t have big appliances to move, so we (mostly me), rather laboriously, gradually moved it using suitcases, lol. I moved in the fourth weekend of February and Shyam joined me three weeks later. It was fun exploring the new area and slowly setting up a much bigger space. We bought a double bed new. We found a solid kitchen table with four chairs for 5,000 Yen and a sofa bed for free on a sayonara sale group on Facebook. And gradually added other furniture and storage as we went.

Another nice feature of our place is that it is south facing. So in the afternoon we get absolutely loads of sunshine! (Maybe not so good in the hot, humid summer, but it is very lovely. Please ignore the untidiness of the photo below and admire the sun drenched rooms, haha,

So on top of moving apartments, we both changed jobs. We had decided before Christmas that it was time for a job change. For me, I knew I had to change schools for April because we can only stay at the same school for three years. So I thought I might as well try and get a better paying job. Happily my friend wrote me a brilliant recommendation for a job at his old company and after a fairly lengthy process, I got a job with them. I also managed to get Shyam a job with them too. It was still teaching, but now at private schools with higher pay.

So I actually got my school placement after we moved apartments. And unfortunately it ended up being quite a hefty commute. I now have to travel on two trains and a bus for a total commute time of nearly 1 and a half hours one way everyday. It’s not too bad though and actually quite common here. Also my school has a lot of no lesson days and if we don’t have lessons, we don’t have to go in. So it’s pretty nice. Plus the school is lovely! I teach second grade in high school. So 16/17 year olds. They’re nice but pretty immature, lol.

I should finish up here. I’ll just finish with a quick note about leaving my old school. I was there for three years. I got to see my first graders go all the way through junior high school and graduate. From little, excitable 12 year olds to serious but still lovely 15 year olds. They were great students! Graduation day was a teary affair for me. Saying goodbye to all the teachers I’d grown close to over the years was hard. But I’ll always remember them. I also received some lovely flowers and letters from both students and teachers.

Thanks for reading! I’ll hopefully update more quickly next time. It will be a photos heavy entry next time.

Two late winter coastal trips

So in February last year, I managed to fit in two trips to the coast to take in some breathtaking sea views. The first was in the Izu Peninsula and the second was the Miura Peninsula.

I went down to Izu during the second week of February last year and met up with two of my fellow BTS fans. We had primarily got together to see the Yet To Come concert at the cinema, but we were also going to be staying down in Izu at one of the girl’s place there and make a weekend of it. So first off on the Saturday we saw the concert at the cinema in Numazu. It was really fun! We took our ARMY bombs (light sticks) and bucked the Japanese trend of being completely silent by dancing in our seats and singing along quietly, hehe.

The next day we drove out to the Jogasaki coast and had a lovely walk. Despite being mid-February, it was so warm out we left our coats in the car. There were some truly breathtaking views along the way, plus a very cool suspension bridge.

About a week or so later, Shyam and I finally got out to the Miura Peninsula. I had been eying going there for ages and we finally took our chance to go on a Sunday daytrip down there. It took about an hour and a half from Yokohama station by train and then bus. That area is called Jogashima and it is extremely remote. A very wild part of Japan that made me think of Kirrin Island in the Famous Five.

When the bus dropped us off, we were a bit unsure where we were supposed to go. Initially we walked down this remote road that took us past a very haunted looking but actually semi occupied industrial building. Then we found a dirty bit of beach that was full of rubbish. Definitely fit the (not quite) abandoned building next to it. We quickly retreated and retraced our footsteps and tried a different route. We eventually found our way to Jogashima Park. It was beautiful but incredibly windy! It was a beautiful garden area that tapered off to a lighthouse on a cliff. The scenery was very dramatic, made more so with the high winds of the day.

We walked from there along the coast line. Although for some of the walk we were kind of enclosed in this path with high hedges either side. It was a fairly lengthy but fun walk, which took us from one side of the island to the other.

The other side of the island had a few shops and houses, so it didn’t feel quite so wild. It was still incredibly windy even though we were lower down now. There was a fun walk out across some bridges where if you didn’t time it well, you were going to get soaked by the high waves. Very exciting!

Overall it was a fun, exciting day out, with lots of beautiful scenery and fresh air. Thoroughly recommend it if you are in the area. And I’ll be back soon(ish) with my next update, where I’ll talk about two big changes that happened in my life.

Christmas and New Year 2022/23

So I’ve managed to let myself get more than a year behind with this now. But I am determined to keep documenting all the important moments during my years in Japan. It’s mostly for myself to look back on in the future. It’s important to me to carry on. So this will be a bumper addition taking in all of last winter vacation.

So school finished for the year ahead of Christmas Day for the second year in a row, which was nice. The joy of the 25th landing on a weekend. Shyam and I celebrated the day at a friend’s sharehouse. They have large kitchen and dining facilities there, so we had a party of around ten of us. Shyam took on the bulk of the cooking, bless him. We couldn’t get hold of a turkey due to a shortage, so we had two chickens instead. His potatoes roasted in goose fat stole everyone’s hearts. I think my mince pies went down pretty well too, but not as much as the apple crumble and, most importantly, custard, haha. It was a fun time with delicious food.

Things got a little frantic after Christmas Day. Shyam and I had booked last minute flights back to the UK as he had important family stuff to sort out. So on Boxing Day morning we met at Haneda airport and flew out to Vietnam, where we had a long layover, but not quite long enough to leave the airport. So we splurged and went in a lounge. It was a novel experience. After a long time, we boarded our flight to Heathrow and thankfully slept through much of it.

Mum and Adrian were waiting for me when we arrived, so it was a slightly tearful farewell with Shyam and then the long drive back up to mum’s house. It being a year ago, I don’t remember details well ^^; but the six days I was back with my family involved seeing my two brothers, my dog and cat, and a couple of friends. But mostly just chilling and eating all the food I’d missed. Nearly 4 years away had flown by but it still felt almost overwhelming to be back. It wasn’t long enough, but I was thankful it even happened.

The last two photos are my mum’s homemade quiche, which I adore, and a second Christmas dinner but had on New Years Day, and with an actual Christmas cracker! (Almost impossible to get in Japan). Thank you to Adrian for cooking that one!

On the morning of January 2nd, mum and Adrian drove me back down to Heathrow as Shyam and I were heading back. We couldn’t stay any longer as I was scheduled to have a surgery on the 5th. Crazy winter, haha ^^; I very briefly met Shyam’s mum and sister at the airport. Both seemed lovely and I was glad to finally meet some of Shyam’s family in person after us having been a couple for years. Goodbyes were said and then Shyam and I hopped on our first flight to Helsinki. We had a short layover there, finding a Burger King that did halloumi burgers! Then took the long flight to Haneda.

I had only one full day between arriving back and my hospital admission. I unpacked my suitcase and repacked a smaller suitcase. Shyam and I spent the day together and he won me a stuffed fox to take into hospital with me. I named it Aki because it has a leaf on it’s head and Aki is Japanese for Autumn, hehe.

I also took an important photo of my haul of goodies I brought back from the UK. You don’t realise how much you love eating certain foods until you can’t easily get them anymore, lol.

Then on the morning of January 5th, I was admitted to hospital to have surgery to remove fibroids. The hospital didn’t allow any visitation so I was alone for nearly a week. It was very hard. But I was prepared for it. I had a good book and my laptop and my new bullet journal I had started. I was allowed to go into this lounge area to make phone calls, which was fine on my first night. But the next day I had my surgery and I wasn’t well enough to get to the lounge for the next 2 days.

The food was hit and miss, as you would expect. In Japanese hospitals it’s rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I remember after 4 days dreaming about getting some bread and then I finally did get some, haha. The worst meal was scrambled egg with tuna mixed into it. I never want the misfortune of eating that again. But overall I can’t really complain too much and the staff took great care of me, helping me a lot even despite the language barrier.

I was let out on the following Wednesday morning. So nearly a full week in there. Apparently the same procedure in the UK would see you in hospital for two days max. I’m not sure how they manage that because I couldn’t even get out of bed for two days, but yeah… fibroids successfully removed and my doctor took great delight in showing me photos. It was disgusting.

I had a few extra days off to recover and then was back at school teaching the following week. So ended my very busy, up and down, winter vacation. I’ll, hopefully, be back soon with the next installment. Going to hopefully speed through 2023 and finally get up to date soon!

November adventures

I’m back with another catch up blog. This entry will contain many vibrant autumnal photos as well as some cool action shots. My November 2022 was pretty awesome!

So first, at the start of the month, Shyam and I went to Showa Kinen Park in West Tokyo. I’d been bugging him to go there for ages and we happened to go just when the autumn leaves were at the height of all their pretty colours. It’s a huge park with dedicated cycle lanes and you can hire bicycles at two of the park’s gates for a reasonable fee. I’m not much of a cyclist due to a bad accident when I was a child, but I really enjoy cycling in parks (away from cars). This experience was amazing! And the autumn leaves made it even better.

There’s a huge lake at the park with boats available to hire. Plus various food places to buy the usual street food fare: yakisoba, long french fries, ice-cream, etc.

The park also hosts a beautiful traditional Japanese garden. The vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows made it even more beautiful. Autumn is my favourite season and this park was a real treat for me.

A few days later I finally got to experience something I’d been wanting to do for years. I’d organised a small group of friends to go to Forest Adventure in Yokohama. It’s a treetop high wires adventure course. Something I’ve been keen to try since before I came to Japan. So I finally made it happen. The price was reasonable and it took about 2 hours to do the course. The zip wires were fun and the course was super difficult in places. Overall I think we all enjoyed it a lot.

Later in November, Katy and I went to a free cultural open day in a convention centre in Tokyo. There were various booths set up from different prefectures, promoting their local specialties. Also booths from different companies promoting their wares. We got to collect a lot of different freebies (if we signed up for their social media). There were also some demonstration booths for various Japanese culture. We tried calligraphy, watched some sword fighting, and got to hold a sword in cool poses too. It was a fun hour or so.

The kanji I wrote means love. The lady said I had good form. I can’t see it myself as it looks super messy to me. Anyways, that’s all for this time. Slowly but surely getting caught up.

Rafting and birthday fun

I’m back! And nearly a full year behind again ^^; I must, like really must, endeavor to actually get caught up over the next few weeks. This entry will be about our camping and rafting trip last year and the wonderful surprise birthday party I got to enjoy the very next day.

So last September we had a long holiday weekend (Friday/Saturday/Sunday) that just happened to coincide with my birthday (on the Saturday). So Shyam and I went with three of our friends on a camping trip for one night. We went to Minakami in Gunma and, because of the heavy rain forecast, stayed in a cabin rather than in tents. We set up a gazebo outside the cabin and just about managed a bbq and board games under there despite the heavy rain. It was very atmospheric.

We slept fairly snugly in the cabin on various airbeds/mats/etc. It wasn’t the most comfortable, but we managed okay. Then the next day (my birthday, and also Ali’s birthday! – my birthday twin 🙂 ) we went rafting! It was soooo fun! My first time to go white water rafting. It was quite a bit more lively than it should have been because of all the rain we had making the river higher and faster. Luckily it had stopped raining, so it was perfect conditions.

As you can see from the photos, the river was very rough, but we still jumped in and had a swim at one point. It was quite difficult because the current was strong and it was very cold, but it was still fun! The rapids were so exciting and overall it was an amazing experience!

We had lunch somewhere after that (was it pizza? I forget ^^; ) and then drove the long journey back to Tokyo. Rafting and camping was super fun!

The next day I was expecting to go out for a birthday meal with just Shyam. He had me believe that was what was happening, but what actually happened was he led me to a restaurant where 7 of my friends were waiting to celebrate with us. It was a lovely surprise! It was a lively, I believe independent, burger restaurant. The burgers were very nice. I got some lovely presents. And Shyam had baked me a cake. The burger place also brought me out a special birthday dessert. So I was thoroughly spoiled for sweets!

It was a truly lovely evening and I can’t thank Shyam enough for organising it. And all my friends for coming. Surprise birthday parties are lovely 🙂

Until next time…

A tale of two theme cafes

I’m back after a couple of months. This time I want to write about two theme cafes I went to last summer. Japan is very big on theme cafes and generally I don’t go to them because the food is overpriced and bad. But, I decided to make an exception for these two for various reasons.

First up, and I’m outing myself even more now as a huge BTS fan, is the Bora Café in Shin-Okubo. My fellow ARMY (BTS’s fanbase) friend had come up to Tokyo for the day and this was very firmly on the list of places we wanted to go. Bora is Korean for purple and it’s a colour very much synonymous with BTS. They had decked the café out in purple, of course, as well as putting up pictures of BTS, playing their music videos on a TV, and adorning the place with the groups’ Line Friends’ characters, BT21.

They had a special menu, which included a Dynamite donut, lol. So we ordered a couple of food items and drinks and had a very pleasant 40 mins or so soaking it all in and playing with all the cushions.

The second theme café was a Stranger Things café. It was a pop up in a Pronto café in Shibuya for a few weeks. We had to prebook tickets as it was very popular, but it was worth the hassle. Because it was in a Pronto, the food and drink prices were actually reasonable compared to the average theme café. They did a very good job on the interior décor and the menu was pretty decent. Overall it was a very fun experience.

Both cafés were only temporary, so I’m glad I went to them whilst I could. This was a very short, picture heavy entry. Hopefully I’ll be back soon with something a bit more substantial.

Late spring/early summer

I’m back with another blog, finally! Sorry for the completely unimaginative title. I just couldn’t think of anything more interesting. Actually, before I start this entry for real, can we just laugh at the fact this blog is called ‘a year in Japan’ and I’m now into my 5th year here. It’s such a common story among foreigners living here. We all plan to come for a year and find ourselves here years later. The unique pull of Japan.

So the first part of this entry is me paying homage to Yokohama. I recently moved form Yokohama to Tokyo, so I’m starting to miss it a bit. It really is a wonderful city. On this occasion, back in April 2022, my friend Miyu and I went to Minatomirai (the port area) on a beautifully sunny day and got lots of lovely photos together and apart. It was a very fun, chill kind of day out.

There was a flower exhibition on outside the red brick warehouse. We were impressed by this use of jeans, haha.

Next, one day in May, Shyam and I went to the Sunshine Observatory in Ikebukuro. It’s not your typical observatory. Yes, there are grand sweeping, panoramic views of Tokyo. But there was also an interactive theme park of sorts. It was called Sky Circus. I say was, because I’ve just found out it has been changed into something completely different now. It was very cool anyway. Lots of cool mirrors and tricks. Things to interact with. Plus they had these extra VR attractions that we didn’t try, but they looked fun.

Last but not least for this blog, we have Shyam and I going to Ueno Zoo. It took some doing as for the longest time it was almost impossible to get tickets because of the restricted numbers of visitors allowed during the pandemic. But we got there in the end. We saw all the animals except the giant pandas (you had to enter a special lottery to be able to see them). We also rented a swan boat and had a ride out on the big lake. It was a very uncomfortable experience as they were clearly not made for our giant foreigner bodies.

After the zoo, we found a beer festival of sorts going on nearby and couldn’t resist going in and soaking up the atmosphere a bit. Also, purchasing some classic ‘long potato’, hehe.

Then for dinner, to round off a lovely day, we went to a vegan ramen restaurant in Ueno station called T’s Tantan. It was very good! Finding meat free food in Japan for Shyam can be very challenging at times, so I’m always happy when I find new places that do good vegetarian, or in this case, vegan, food.

Okay, that’s it for the post. We’ll move into July 2022 and beyond next time. I will get caught up! Even if my entries are kind of sparse and mashing a load of months together. Once I’m caught up, the quality of the blog should hopefully rise again. ^^;

Later winter/early spring blog

I’m currently on a ten hour layover in Hanoi on the way home for the first time in nearly four years, so I thought it was a good time to write a blog. My last blog was about our snowrific trip to Sapporo. I’ve decided this one will be a bit of a catch-all for February/March this year.

So first up, Katy and I went on a a little day out to Kichijoji in Tokyo. There is a shopping complex there that has a very distinct Studio Ghibli theme. There are an assortment of little shops and cafes there, mostly with a cat theme. But the buildings and decor could very easily be straight out of a Ghibli film.

Later in February, Shyam and I went to Sankeien Gardens just south of Yokohama. It’s a beautiful traditional Japanese garden, which opened in 1906. Well worth the 700 Yen entry fee. There are ponds with ducks, historic buildings, and a little shop selling, among other things, dango. And this dango was the most extravagant I have ever had. They had special Spring time flavours and they were delicious!

And then into mid-March, I visited a new friend down in Izu in Shizuoka prefecture. We were primarily getting together to go see the BTS concert at the cinema. But I went down there fairly early and she showed me some beautiful Izu sights before the cinema trip. We went to the Izu Panorama Park first. It’s a cable car up to the top of this mountain, where there are beautiful sights of Mount Fuji, a special shrine, a free foot spa, and yummy ice-cream!

After that, we went for a late lunch at this scenic spot she knows. Unfortunately the curry I ordered was spicy, so I couldn’t eat it, but the salad and bread was still devoured, haha.

And then from there we went to Joren Falls, which is a place with a lovely waterfall. You have to descend a lot of steps, which of course needed to be climbed again, but it was worth it. I really love the sounds and atmosphere of waterfalls.

And so in the evening we went to a cinema in Numazu and watched the BTS concert. It was day 4 (I think) of the LA Permission to Dance concerts being livestreamed in cinemas around the world. It was really cool watching it with so many fellow fans in the cinema screen. Japanese people are pretty reserved, so it wasn’t that lively., but we saw videos online of cinemas in other countries get very into the swing of it, haha.

We got back late and slept in a bit the next morning. I had to leave fairly swiftly, so we just had an early lunch, and then I headed back on the train. It was a really lovely short weekend away.

And that brings this blog to its conclusion. I’ll, hopefully, be back very soon with another blog. I really want to get caught up ^^;

Winter trip number 2

Um… so I’m writing this a lot later than I intended. But, as I always say, better late than never! ^^;

So, two weeks after our first winter trip to Nagano (see my previous post), Shyam and I flew out to Sapporo in the northern Japanese island, Hokkaido. We took a reasonably priced flight out of Narita airport (the limousine bus from Tokyo station was very easy and convenient again). The flight was fine apart from the moment the pilot said that we might not be able to land due to the bad weather and he might have to fly us straight back to Tokyo. Luckily that did not happen! We landed safe and sound at New Chitose Airport.

I booked our hotel through booking.com and they very kindly offered us a free taxi from the airport to the hotel. Sounds nice, right? Wrong! So it’s about an hour by train and 2,000 Yen, so I thought going by a paid for taxi sounded like a good idea. It wasn’t. The weather was terrible and therefore so were the roads and, of course, the traffic. It took us 4 hours to do what should have been a 50 minute journey. Nightmare! Our driver was very nice though and even gave us a great recommendation for a ramen shop near our hotel, which we gratefully went to after checking in and dropping off our bags (it was fairly late by this point).

The street our hotel was on. Just a little snowy…

Doesn’t look that good, but it tasted amazing, especially after 4 hours in that taxi.,

The hotel room was nice and I think we must have slept like logs after our arduous journey. The next morning we got up and started our first full day of exploring Sapporo. The first hour or so was basically just us marveling at just how much snow there was everywhere and getting very excited and taking lots of photos.

We eventually got over our obsession with the snow (and later, inevitably, tired of it a bit), and headed to the Sapporo TV Tower. This is a tower built in the 1950s that has an observation deck with nice panoramic views of the city. There were a couple of places to eat, a souvenir shop, some photo spots, and a small arcade there. It cost 1,000 Yen to go up, and I would say it was worth it. The snowy views were lovely.

One of the views from the observation deck.

After that we took a bus to the Sapporo Beer Museum. Neither of us really drink beer, but we were interested in visiting nonetheless, and admission was free so why not? The outside was very pretty, covered in snow of course. There wasn’t actually too much to see inside. Just some big machines that used to make the beer when it was an active factory. The interesting part was the cafe (bar?) area where you could buy beer samplers. This was done by a vending machine, I think. We got the 800 Yen 3 beer sampler set that came with a container of assorted nuts too. As I said, we’re not really beer drinkers, but these were really nice! I thoroughly recommend this if you visit Sapporo.

Even the chairs have the famous star in them.

The very quaint looking factory building

In the evening we went to the number one rated (on Trip Advisor) vegetarian friendly restaurant in Sapporo, Jyoti The Door to India. It was Shyam’s birthday, so I’d researched carefully in advance to make sure we had somewhere good to eat on his actual birthday day. It turned out great! Lovely atmosphere, delicious food, and friendly staff. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

The birthday boy (he’ll probably tell me off for posting this pic, but it’s the only one I have from the restaurant ^^; )

After that we had a cocktail each back in the very exclusive looking bar at the hotel. It had a nautical theme (I don’t have any photos and I don’t know why!) and a very professional, experienced bartender. It was a lovely ending to a very lovely day.

Day number 3 started with a buffet breakfast at the hotel. It was a typical Japanese style breakfast. Curry, rice, miso soup, various meats, fish, egg, etc. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how different it is to a Western style breakfast. It’s nice to try out every now and then though.

Then it was off to Moerenuma Park to go have some fun in the snow! It was an hour journey that included a train and a bus and a fair amount of walking, but it was worth it. It’s a huge park with lots of different activities going on. We headed to the Glass Pyramid “HIDAMARI”, an art installation built in 2003.

There is seating inside, an art gallery and, most importantly, somewhere to hire sleds! They had blue and pink sleds. We decided to just get one to share, so I chose pink, haha. There is a vast hill near the pyramid that was, of course, snow covered. Many people were sledding down it, but we found our own space and had a lot of fun. Dragging the sled up the hill was hard work as we kept sinking into the soft snow as we walked. It was hilarious at first, but we tired of it quickly, so I think we only lasted about 30 minutes with the sled. But it really was a lot of fun!

The most adorable pic of Shyam I have ever taken, hehe.

After we took the sled back and had a little warm up inside the pyramid, we took a bus back and hurried to our next destination, Shiroikoibito Park, which is home to the famous Sapporo Chocolate Factory. Unfortunately it was already late afternoon and most of the attractions inside had already closed or were about to close, but we got some nice photos in the gardens and were able to have a quick look inside at the gift shop and restaurant area.

We finished the day off with a chain okonomiyaki place that was in the Donki near our hotel. We also gave the Donki itself a good look over. The thing I love most about Donki’s (Don Quijote) is that no two are the same. It’s always fun to explore them, especially in different cities.

Our last day was the usual, ‘have a last look around and buy souvenirs’ kind of day. We found some more very authentic ramen in a tiny shop in a quiet arcade. It was very good and very cheap!

Then we grabbed our luggage from the hotel and hopped on a train to the airport (no free taxis this time, haha). New Chitose Airport is a tourist attraction in itself, so we had great fun whiling away our last couple of hours up north in the shops there, particularly the Royce Chocolate World. They even had a chocolate making viewing window, although I believe it was inactive whilst we were there.

And that was our trip to Sapporo! Before I finish, I’ll just quickly mention a couple of features of Sapporo I forgot to include. They have trams up there! Mostly just boring green ones, but there were a couple of brightly colored ones too (a Pokemon one? or maybe Hello Kitty? I don’t remember ^^; ). There is also a whole network of underground shopping centers and walkways, which was an absolute godsend as it was freezing! And being able to navigate our way around the city center away from the bitter cold was so much more comfortable.

I would love to go up there again in the summer next time. I bet it will seem like a completely different place without all the snow. But I 100% recommend this snowy kingdom during the colder months. We thoroughly enjoyed it!

Winter trip number 1

So in January we managed to do two snow filled trips away. The first was an overnight to Nagano. Primarily we wanted to see the famous onsen bathing snow monkeys. But just seeing that much snow felt like a novelty as I hadn’t seen anything like that for many many years. It definitely brought the kids out in us.

We took the shinkansen this time after our not so pleasant experience with the delayed buses last time we went to Nagano. It was much nicer (and faster, obviously). It was really lovely watching the landscape zoom by and change from concrete jungle to snowy, mountainous countryside from the comfort of our seats. As soon as we got off the train, we found the bus that would take us to the snow monkeys. They aren’t very frequent, but I think we lined up fairly well with it luckily.

The first thing we saw when we got off the bus, after an hour or so ride there, was a building covered in sharp, fierce-looking icicles.

We had a fair walk from here to the snow monkeys, but it wasn’t too cold as long as we kept moving. Plus the piles of snow everywhere had us, as I already said, acting like kids. Lots of jumping in snow mounds and throwing snowballs at each other as we walked. It was also very scenic with the snow coated trees, so we took lots of photos.

The snow monkeys area costs 800 yen to get in, but it was well worth it. It 100% lived up to our expectations. They were everywhere! Plenty of them were having a soak in the onsen, and loads more were just scampering about all over the place. Nearly as tame as the deer in Nara Park. Which I guess is not surprising since they are part of a tourist attraction. Most people there were being very respectful though. It was so interesting just watching the monkeys interacting with each other. And the snowy setting made it feel even more perfect.

Note the two different spellings of monkey, hehe.

The picturesque approach to the snow monkeys.

You can actually see the steam rising off the water here.

Shyam got lucky getting this shot, haha.

There is a little gift shop up there as well, of course. We bought some magnets and postcards because you just have to. Then we started our hike back to the bus top and stopped off at a restaurant on route. The Enza cafe was actually a little gem of a place, especially considering it is basically the only eatery in this tourist trap area. We had big bowls of warming ramen followed with very delicious homemade apples pies.

Unfortunately we had a bit of a wait for that infrequent bus back to Nagano station, so we decided to pay the 500 yen entry fee to sit in the Shigakogen Roman museum (the icicle building), which is a very small art museum with some interesting art. I was mostly just relieved to wait in the warm and use the toilet whilst we waited for the bus though, honestly.

We checked into our budget friendly hotel near Nagano station when we got back and I don’t remember us doing too much in the evening as the day had been long and fall of travelling and walking. No pictures of the hotel room this time, but suffice to say it was bigger than the hotel room we had when we were last in Nagano. I have a rule about hotel room sizes after that tiny Nagano room.

The next day we didn’t really do all that much. We didn’t properly explore Nagano last time as we did our trips out to Matusmoto and Obuse instead. So this time we went to Zenko-ji temple and explored the areas around it. The nearby Joyama Park was very snowy and nice to walk around, but the free zoo inside it was a very sad affair. I felt incredibly sorry for the animals there. We found a small soba shop and had nice hot soupy soba to warm us up.

After we ate, I think we just did our souvenir shopping and then caught the shinkansen back to the city. It was a really lovely two days away though and really whet our appetites for snowy getaways. So much so that we found somewhere with even more snow just 2 weeks later. I’ll hopefully be back with that blog soon!