Japan Anniversary Trip - Kawaguchiko

When we were planning our trip to Japan, Jeff said he'd like to see Mount Fuji, so I did some research.  I found out that Mount Fuji is located in the five lakes district, and there are some cool ryokan (small hotels/inns) in the area.  I found one ryokan near Lake Kawaguchi aka Kawaguchiko, so that's where we headed on our bus out of Tokyo.

Check in wasn't until 3:00pm, but the ryokan was only about a ten minute walk from the bus station, so we walked over to drop off our bags and take in the view.

There were too many clouds to see Mount Fuji, but we decided to at least go to the Mount Fuji visitor center and learn a bit about it.  On a map, it looked walkable, but we discovered that it was on the other side of a major road, and was really just set up for tour buses to drop off large groups of people.  Luckily, there weren't any tour groups there, and we pretty much had the place to ourselves, so we took our time.  The first display we found had a robot that explained the significance of Mount Fuji to you.  It was pretty weird.

We found some other displays, most of which were at about the same level of "interesting", for example, interesting video/diorama combo,

plus some fun photo ops, Hello Kitty Fujisan anyone?

We also found a place for lunch.  You had to order and pay for lunch through a machine.

It was eventually delivered by humans though.  We got soup and "lava" bread.

For the walk back, we meandered a bit through the neighborhoods.  It is a really beautiful area even without a view of Mount Fuji (in the clouds behind the houses).

One of the things that impressed us the most was the gardening.  There were food gardens and sculpted trees everywhere.

We had a great time wandering through the little streets and neighborhoods and noticing interesting things, including lots of big, green spiders that I was too scared to get a picture of, because they would start skittering around in their webs every time I got close.

By the time we got back to the ryokan we were ready for some pampering.  Luckily, that was exactly what we had planned.  We started by enjoying the view from our room's balcony.

We had a traditional Japanese style room.  At night they moved the tables and chairs to the side and put out sleeping mats for us.  Jeff called it our Japanese slumber party.

Shortly after we got into the room, our room attendant arrived with hot towels, tea, snacks and information.

I'm not sure exactly what happened to this apple, but the end result was yummy.

Part of the reason for picking this ryokan was that they have onsens, which are natural hot springs baths.  Usually in Japan these are separated by gender and you go in naked.  Jeff wasn't such a fan of that, but this ryokan had some other options.  First of all, they had a foot onsen on the roof, so after tea and snacking on dried apples, we went up to rest our weary feet and take in the view.

The ryokan also offered private onsen with views of a rock garden every day and Mount Fuji on clear days.  I booked one of those for us too.

It was incredibly relaxing, but I also got a kick out of the fact that they provided a little baby bath seat, so that you could use it as a family bath if you wanted to.

Another thing the ryokan provided was yukatas, which are kind of like a cross between a bathrobe and a kimono.  If you want to, you can spend your entire ryokan stay in a yukata and slippers, and we saw many people walking around doing just that.  Jeff tried it out for a while, but then went back to his regular t-shirt and shorts.  I kept mine on for our fancy dinner in our room, served to us by our room attendant.  When we told her this was our anniversary trip, she said she wanted to take a picture of us toasting with our peach aperitif.  I'm so glad she suggested it, because the picture makes me super happy.

The dinner was a delicious adventure.  We started with a whole bunch of appetizers.

The best was a big plate of delicious sashimi.

Then we had crab miso soup.

We also had a Japanese take on vichyssoise, with fish and freeze dried vegetables thrown in.  It was actually really good.

While we were enjoying our soup, our room attendant lit small candles under our lava plates, so that they could heat up and we could cook our incredible beef and vegetables that were sitting just above the vichyssoise.  The meat and the sashimi were tied for the best part of the meal.

There were a couple more boiled and steamed dishes after that, but they weren't that tasty, and by that point we were pretty much full.  I managed to make a little bit of space to try the dessert.

The orange "slice" was actually just an orange peel filled with orange jelly, so I had to try it, and the little bowl had a yummy coconut custard.

We gave ourselves some time to digest while they cleared away the food and switched the furniture around to night mode.  Then we finished off the night with in-room shiatsu massages, which we decided are kind of like Thai massages, but faster.  

Even without a sighting of Mount Fuji, it was an absolutely incredible day.

Japan Anniversary Trip - Part One

Jeff and I hit our ten year anniversary at the end of August.  We went out to dinner on the actual night, but what we really wanted to do to mark the anniversary was take a fun trip, just the two of us.  We didn't want to leave Young alone with the girls for too long though, so we waited on our trip until the end of September when my mom was planning to come out to visit.  It worked out great for the girls, since they got lots of time with Safta.  I didn't feel like I got enough time with her, but, on the plus side, I got to have a fabulous vacation with my husband.

We started our trip by flying into Tokyo.  The last time Jeff and I flew together on a plane without children, was before Vivian was born.  We both actually got to read our books!

For our trip, I had gotten us the Japan Rail Pass.  Mom brought the exchange order with her from the States.

We had to wait in line for a bit to get the real JR pass, but then we were all set to go on the Narita Express into Tokyo.  The train pulled into the airport station, and then a cleaning man went into each car to spin the seats around and give the car a once over.  Jeff said it reminded him of the cleaning robots in WALL-E.

One of the first things we saw when we got to Tokyo Station was Judy's future car.

Then we went outside to wait for our Airbnb host who was picking us up to take us to the apartment.

The apartment was very nice, but it was also a bit outside of the downtown area, so there weren't any good sushi places around.  Instead, we found a restaurant within walking distance that served gyoza, yum :-)

The people who worked at the restaurant didn't really speak English, and we don't really speak Japanese, but we managed to order through a combination of pointing, smiling, and nodding.  We were completely stumped though when they brought us mystery appetizers that we hadn't ordered.

In the spirit of learning about a new culture, we tried a little of everything.  The bowl on the right had mushrooms and beans with some kind of soy/sesame sauce combo, so we ate most of the that.  The other bowl though was more meat/egg/seafood.  Jeff managed to enjoy most of it once he realized that the yellow glob on the side was spicy sauce.  In Jeff's world, everything tastes good covered in spicy sauce, even if it is a little squishy.

The next day our plan was to take the train to the bus station, and then take a bus to Lake Kawaguchi in the Mount Fuji area.  The night before, we had scoped out breakfast places around the train station and discovered Doutor Coffee, a Japanese chain I had never heard of before, but which became our go to breakfast destination for the rest of our trip.  They have good coffee and plenty of sandwich options that worked well for breakfast and for takeaway for a lunch on the go.

Once we were fueled up, we were ready to navigate the joys of purchasing a bus ticket to somewhere we had never been before in a foreign country.  Luckily, the bus station was set up for tourists, and the people who worked there were very friendly and spoke English.  It's incredible though that in a country with so much advanced technology, most things are still recorded on paper.  My goal was for us to catch the bus around 10:00am, so we got there around 9:30.  When I had checked online, there was plenty of space on the 10:00am bus, but when we got to the station, they said it was full, but we could get on the 11:15 bus.  I asked politely (politeness is always the key in Asia) if there was any way to get on the earlier bus.  I had heard the tourist couple next to me being assigned the 11:15 bus as well, so I figured it was a long shot, but it never hurts to ask.  Sure enough, the saleslady hesitated for a second, and then said I could get on the wait list for the 10:00am.  I said sure, so she filled out another piece of paper and walked me over to stand in front of another counter.  There was no one else there, and after a few minutes, I got called up and told we could get on the 10:00am bus.  Woohoo for the triumph of saying please and smiling!  Jeff was flabbergasted at the whole "system", but we figured, just roll with it and get on the bus.

The bus ride was lovely once we left the city.  We stopped several times at little bus stops along the road, that had stairs leading off to what we assumed were residential areas.

We could tell when we got into the lake district, because there were beautiful views of towns around the lake.  It was really hard to get a picture from the bus that was in focus and not blocked by mesh fencing.  This is the best one I have.

We also got into mountainous areas where we had to go through tunnels and do some looping up and around.  It was beautiful.

As we got closer to Mount Fuji, we saw that it was covered in mist, which was not surprising giving the rainy day. What was surprising was that there is an amusement park along the road with a view of Mount Fuji.

We never did get a good view of Fujisan, so we figured we'll come back one summer when the girls are older and make sure to include a stop for roller coaster riding.

Appreciating Downtown

I'm WAY behind on my blogging, so I'm going to have to condense some stuff to catch up.  Way back in September, Jeff and I did a walking tour of Wireless Road through the embassy.  One of the embassy spouses is a historian, and he thought it would be interesting to research the area around the embassy and share what he found with anyone who was interested.  There was actually a good turnout, even though Jeff was the only other guy there.  It was a fascinating tour, and I took lots of notes, but I'll just hit some of the highlights here.

We started at NOB.  The guide told us about the building design and the history behind the name.  He also took us outside and explained how all buildings in the area are required to have a water feature to absorb excess rainwater and help prevent flooding.  The NOB's is lovely.

We learned that it's also a certified wildlife area, which I thought was pretty cool.

Next we walked down the street a bit to look at some of the interesting architecture

and to learn more about the different kinds of spirit houses.

The wooden one on the right is a spirit house for family spirits.  This is where you'd go for granting wishes and asking permission to do things like cut down a tree.  The more elaborate one on the left is for communication with the gods.  The single pillar is supposed to represent Mount Sumeru, the center of the universe in Buddhist cosmology.  The position of the shrines is determined by priests.  Our guide said to think of it as a cosmic satellite dish.  You get the best communication if it's pointing the right direction.  In Thailand, they practice a combination of Therevada Buddhism, Hinduism, and Animism.  For example, it is not unusual to also see a shrine like this one just down the street with a multiarmed Hindu deity.

As we walked along Wireless Road, we had to make the joke about all the wires.

These are actually telecommunication wires for things like television and internet.  The city rents the poles out to the telecommunication companies, and then those companies load the poles down with wires.  Sometimes, the load them down so much, that the whole pole falls over.  This is something that the city is trying to work on, and their long term goal is to get the wires underground.  The road is called wireless because this is where Bangkok's first radio (or wireless) station was set up.  At that point it was far outside of the main city which was along the river banks.  That was done for safety reasons, since people weren't sure exactly how radio waves would effect the general population.  Obviously, we're all doing fine, and the city has expanded far beyond Wireless Road.

In terms of the expansion, our guide also told us about how roads had been built over many of the klongs (canals), but now the city is considering reverting some of them to klongs and increasing public transportation via boat to try and cut down on some of the car congestion in the city.  The other option for avoiding the traffic is taking a Bangkok helicopter, the nickname for the motorcycle taxis that zip all around the city.  These motorcycle taxis are easily identifiable by the bright orange vests that the drivers wear.  The vests are similar to a taxi medallion and cost a lot of money.  Different groups of motorcycles have their own operational area, and the police know who works which area.  The typical shift for one of these motorcycle taxi drivers is 12 hours, during which time they can earn about 400 baht, a little over $10.

We walked around Lumphini Park, which we learned was named after the Nepalese birthplace of Buddha.  It's a huge park in the middle of downtown Bangkok.  Our guide likes to go there regularly, and he noticed that Thais who go there generally wear the color of the day.  In Thai culture, each day has a color.  For example, Tuesday, the day of our tour, is a pink day, so our guide was wearing a light pink button down shirt.  He said if you look around Lumphini Park and blur your eyes a little, you'll easily be able to tell what the color of the day is.

It started pouring rain at about that point.

Our guide pointed out little boxes where traffic police sit to change the lights, since Bangkok, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to periodically turn off the automated traffic light system, and instead let a person in a box decide when the light should be red or green.  This is supposed to address the traffic problems, but, not surprisingly, seems to have caused even more congestion than usual.

We made our way back down the street to EOB, where we learned that the U.S.'s diplomatic relationship with Thailand is the longest standing one we have.  This is partially due to the Thai ambassador to the U.S.'s refusal to present a declaration of war to the U.S. during World War II.  Our guide also pointed out the shrine on EOB's grounds that was built by U.S. mission volunteers.

We learned lots of other interesting facts, but I didn't take many more pictures, because I didn't want my phone to get wet.  It was definitely an interesting tour, and I would recommend it to residents and visitors alike.

I found myself downtown again that weekend to hang out with our friends and enjoy another yummy meal at Scarlett.

I was back downtown the following Monday to help chaperone Vivian's class field trip to the Snake Farm.  Since we've gone before, I didn't really want to go, but there was a need for chaperones, and Vivian guilted me into it.  I'm glad I went though, because I got to witness her single handedly holding a python.

I'm so proud of my brave girl.  I'm proud of the other kid too.  She's been doing a good job of playing quietly in her big girl bed for the quiet time that replaced nap time.  Although, I tricked her into a nap the other day.

Life is good :-)