I have journeyed to new places once again.  This time I have 5 nights in Okayama with my friend and brother.  We're going on all sorts of excursions around the area.  Today, our first day, I did what I did on my last trip to Kumamoto... left the prefecture!  We took the train across the Seto Ohashi Bridge that crosses the Inland Sea to form the ( Read more... )

Ok, here's Part 2 of my Cherry Blossom Wonderland miniseries... this is the Gion Edition.

I did some pre-hanami outing research and saw that there were some popular cherry blossom spots around Gion. "How convenient!" thought I!  My dance class was Sunday morning until about 12:30 in the afternoon and is across the street from the beautiful ( Read more... )

For a preview of this entry, please go to my previous update and watch my video from Gion. It's a short but sweet 1 minute clip of a beautiful path of cherry blossoms I saw that day.

My cherry blossom adventure this past weekend started in Arashiyama. For some reason in my last couple of springs here, I had NEVER been to Kyoto to see the cherry ( Read more... )

I spent this weekend seeing cherry blossoms around Kyoto. Yesterday I went to Arashiyama and today I walked around Gion after my dance class. I call these places Sakura Wonderland. It really felt like I was walking through a cherry blossom Heaven and I felt full of wonder. So here I present all you blog readers with a video preview of what I saw ( Read more... )

Shirakawago is a historical village located near Takayama in Gifu Prefecture.  The buildings are famous for their thatched roofs that come to a point at the top like praying hands.  This area gets a lot of snow in the winter, so this style of construction is good because it can handle all the snow.  Some interesting info... this is one of the ( Read more... )

This past weekend I went on a bus tour to Takayama in Gifu prefecture.  It was a full bus of 42 travelers (4 in my group) that made a bunch of stops in the Takayama area, including Shirakawago.

It was quite an early morning.  I was up at 5am so we could get to Umeda for our 7:50 bus.  Takayama is over 5 hours away from Osaka by bus, so we made a ( Read more... )

After more than 2.5 years living in Japan, I finally stayed at a Ryokan... aka a Japanese-style inn.  I went on a bus tour to Takayama in Gifu Prefecture this past weekend with my friend, her JTE, and her JTE's friend.  Our accommodation for Saturday night was at a ryokan in the area.  It was situated in a mountainous area.  Both dinner that night ( Read more... )

I'm on A ROLL with updating my blog today.

Time for a food post. A post all about food. Tasty Indian food, to be exact.

Ok I take that back. Gonna start with a bit of background info first....  Kobe has the biggest population in Japan of people from India. Therefore, Indian restaurants galore! If you want Indian food, Kobe is the place to go, as ( Read more... )

The new Kyoto-sensei (vice principal) has arrived. HE IS HERE ( Read more... )

I went on a short trip last weekend to Kumamoto City on Kyushu.  I planned this trip a while ago because it was a long weekend and for the past couple years, the cherry blossoms had been in bloom.  This trip was inspired originally too by the opening of the new Shinkansen line that would get me all the way from Kobe to Kumamoto by one train.  But ( Read more... )