JapanGirl64

Over the Veteran's Day holiday we made an overnight trip to Ibaraki. It was a lovely drive north along the coast. I wanted to see an "Illumination" of fall leaves at Hananuki Gorge.  The next day we stopped at the Aqua World Oarai Aquarium. Japan knows how to do aquariums. We love them all! Our last stop was to see the Ushiku Diabutsu. Pretty. Dang. Big. We went up to the top and looked out.  But my favorite part of the whole trip was the drive home, well up until we hit major traffic in the bowels of Tokyo (C2 Death Loop). But before that, we were coming towards Tokyo from the north and the sunset was perfection. It made the Tokyo skyline look like a black cut out against an orange-yellow backdrop. It was incredible. But sadly we didn't get a pic. You'll just have to imagine it!

 The last half of October we were so happy to have the Mitchell family come to Japan for a visit. We started our adventures in Tokyo. Mitchells arrived from Korea (the first leg of their trip) at 2am on a Sunday. It just so happened that week was our Stake Conference, which is held in the Temple Annex, so we all stayed at Hardy Barracks in downtown Tokyo for a couple of nights. Our Tokyo activities included a visit to the Taiko Drum Museum, the Ninja and Samurai Museum, Senso-ji Temple, TeamLabs, Trick Art Muesum, an Owl Cafe, Meiji Jingu, and Shibuya!    After Tokyo we came back to Camp Zama and took a few day trips - Hakone (including a swimming suit hot springs), Disney Sea, Miyagase Dam (where we did Indigo dying), and Showa Park (where we rented tandem bikes). Plus lots of fun times just hangin out (including a trip to Zama Costco)! The next week we planned a road trip to Matsumoto and Kamikochi. It was fun to stay at a Japanese ryokan! Our hope was to be able to see...