Every year for the past 10 years or more, we've been visiting the Winery Hill Hotel in the summer and/or winter with my mother-in-law accompanied by aunt or sister-in-law. The kids love the huge swimming pool in summer and we enjoy the hot springs and buffet all year around.
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Yesterday we went out to the park as a family to get some exercise. All that partying was really making us want to get some fresh air. New Years is also traditionally kite flying season because the weather is very good but windy. While the kids played some ball - soccer and baseball - I started on the kite flying. Once I got it up high, the ( Read more... )

After a fitful night, I finally got some sleep from around 4 to 7am and went for a quick bath before breakfast at 8:00. When I got back, everyone was packing and cleaning up the futons so we could have a few more minutes in the bath after breakfast ( Read more... )

January 5 and 6 we went on a trip to Izu Penninsula, a vacation spot for people in the Kanto area, famous for its many hot springs, tasty fish(both river and ocean), wasabi (Japanese horseradish) and tangerines (mikan).

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Akemashite Omedeto Gozai-masu! (Happy New Year everyone!)

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The new year has come here in Japan. People are visiting various temples and shrines to pray for a good year. On TV they are showing these temples in various parts of the country - especially those in Fukushima and other Prefectures affected by the tsunami and nuclear accident.

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Today, on Audrey's urging, we went to the park to fly our kites. As I mentioned earlier, kite flying is a traditional New Years sport and we go almost every year. We are starting a little early this time because the kids got new kites for Christmas :D ( Read more... )

We had planned to have our Christmas dinner on Sunday the 22nd, but Alex got a last minute invitation to go ocean fishing that day with his friend. Alex loves fishing and since he doesn't have many chances to go, we didn't want him to have to choose one over the other so, we moved the dinner over one day (the 23rd is the Emperor's birthday and a ( Read more... )

December 21st was the annual mochi-tsuki (rice cake pounding) event held at our apartment complex. It is a very traditional end-of-year/new year event in which families and friends would get together and pound on the sticky rice to make rice cakes. As the man pounds on the rice with the heavy wooden "hammer" the wife would turn over the rice in ( Read more... )