Friday, August 31, 2007

Tamba Winery

Andrew's host family owns this winery. They have been taking care of us since we arrived and continued this treatment today, taking us to Tamba Wine for a picnic feast. We sat next to the vineyard where they let us grab some of the grapes to eat with lunch.
You can see they have both white and purple...
This was a traditional bbq - we cooked our food over hot coals in a pot right on our table.
When we left, they gave us some grapes to take with us - these are about the size of an eyeball and are absolutely luscious as is all fruit in Japan. When you bite into one of these it does something funny to your senses because they are so flavorful and like nothing you have had before.
Tomorrow is the wedding. I can't wait!

Thursday, August 30, 2007

First Day

I took so many pictures today of so many interesting things that I can't post them all here. So here are just a scant few.

First, check out the controls on the toilet in our room. Nice, huh?


But, this is what a normal toilet looks like in Japan. Not nice...
This was my breakfast. Sorry to put it next to the picture of the toilet. In any case, doesn't it look so healthy? That green drink is green tea milk. Yum!
This is a little crepe stand in a typical grocery store. The kids love trying the colorful juice drinks here even though they don't taste good to them.
One highlight of our day was going to the beautiful Gold Temple. It is called, "Kinkakuji" and is built in an absolutely beautiful, quiet area surrounded by gorgeous nature. There were hundreds of tourists there who will remember at least part of their visit to this peaceful place as punctuated by the gleeful screams of two insane American children.

I finally had my first "keitaidenwa" research session last night. This one is older, not expensive and definitely not loaded up with the works. You can't watch TV on it for example. But, like all mobile phones in Japan, you can scan things with it . See the little square on that business card? You scan that with your phone and it opens a web page. This phone also comes standard with video calling - very smooth, clear, perfect picture - straight out of a science fiction movie. You can also pay for things -even from a vending machine - with this phone!We also went on a cruise of the biggest lake in Japan - lake Biwa - but I'll save those pictures for another day.

Enjoy this video of a talking bird we found who can say, "wow" in Japanese. You'll hear it as, "sugoi, ne!" The kids went nuts over this and apparently when we get home we are going straight to the pet store to buy four parrots. The kids each want one that speaks English and one that speaks Japanese.


Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Arrived

That was a long flight! But it was really smooth and comfortable and now we are here. The kids slept so they think it is 9:30 in the morning instead of 11:30 at night. We want to go to sleep but they are running around our room screaming. We are staying at the Karasuma Hotel in Kyoto in a traditional tatami mat room.
It has a little room for having tea.
Grace is loving the food...
We found a yummy izakeya around the corner but we didn't order anything interesting enough to take pictures of so here is the menu...
Tomorrow we will tour around Kyoto so I'll have pictures of lots of temples - I'll also put up some pictures of the fun options on our toilet and all the crazy stuff for sale in the convenience shop on the corner.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

On our way to Osaka

We are in Detroit having our first Japanese meal of the trip before we take our long flight. The kids were so hyper on the way here - Noah kept saying, "this flight is lasting so long." It was an hour flight.

I wonder how long into the next flight before I bring out the children's Dramamine...

So these are my first food pictures - ramen and soba lunches that we shared with the kids...


Look for a new post tomorrow!

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Setting up the blog

Since I like to take pictures of interesting meals I eat, I decided to set up a blog that I will post to every day while I'm traveling. I won't put my Barcelona meals up here because that trip is old news, right?

Instead, I'll post meals from the Japan trip. Also, I was asked to post pictures of the cars and the houses. I'm going to post pictures of the vending machines too and lots of cell phone pictures. Anything of interest is getting posted here.