Konnichi wa!

We went to Japan for our year-end holidays. The first few days were spent in Tokyo, followed by a couple more at the Rusutsu resort in Hokkaido. It was our first time visiting Japan, and we thought it was an excellent trip for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the whole cultural experience was really uniquely interesting to us, particularly with regard to the Japanese efficiency, discipline and punctuality. While we've heard of this many times, one really has to see and experience it personally. Secondly, it was great meeting up with the Imai family again. Thirdly, we thought the trip catered to the wants of everyone in the family since we incorporated Disney, good food, skiing, and reunion with old friends.

Those who know HY and TP well know how many times they've been to Disneyland. Expectedly, they wanted to go to Tokyo Disneyland as well. Since we didn't have much time in Tokyo, we came to a compromise and agreed to go to DisneySea instead. Now that HY and TP are slightly older, we thought DisneySea suited them quite well and they did enjoy the slightly more mature rides very much, especially HY, who managed to ride the Flounder's Roller Coaster on her own.

HY on her own on the Flounder's Roller Coaster

HY and TP checking out Leonardo Da Vinci's flying machine at DisneySea

These canons were pretty neat. Pull on the rope and they'll fire with simulated smoke and sound effects

The old car rides were a good break for our achy breaky legs

The reunion with Katsutoshi, Yoko, Hana and Haku was great. Its been almost 2 and a half years since we last saw each other and the kids took a bit of time to warm-up to each other again. They brought us to an Izakaya (which translates to "drinking house") in the Shinjuku area, and then invited us to their place in Tanashi for a home-cooked meal on another.

After a hearty meal in Shinjuku

Yoko impresses with her cooking again. I'm always amazed how she also takes the trouble to decorate the food she's cooked with restaurant style presentations

One for the family album

While in Tokyo, we also managed to catch up with the Wong family, who incidentally helped with a great deal of our hotel and Rusutsu reservations. We had a nice dinner at a Tonkatsu restaurant at the Takashimaya Times Square.

The tonkatsu here is very good. What's really surprisingly good as well is the shredded cabbage (free flow) with the dressing that they provide

This is the queue for Daiwa sushi at the Tsukiji Central Fish Market at 1130 am. Its interesting that there were many other similar looking sushi bars with hardly any crowd, but a few, such as Daiwa, were extremely crowded. Somehow, it seems they have access to better and fresher fish.

Not only was the food good in Japan, even the fake display food looked really good. We had to constantly remind HY to stop touching all the plastic food. This photo was taken at the Chitose airport in Hokkaido. The food and supermarket area in this airport is quite amazing too

Japan has vending machines that sell everything everwhere. The kids, especially TP, loved the vending machines. One item in particular that they got hooked on was the hot chocolate. Here's TP enjoying one of his probably twice daily fix of hot cocoa (pronounced co-co-ah if I heard correctly)

As with all holidays with children, we didn't manage to go to many cultural or touristy spots. One of the few places that we did visit was the Imperial Palace gardens. To keep HY and TP entertained, we had to conjure some interesting story of the Imperial Palace and the Emperor. TP, having read all the fairy tale stories about Emperors, was fascinated that the Emperor of Japan is alive and well.

HY in one of her rare playful moments in front of a Samurai guardhouse

Enjoying the wintry afternoon sun in the Imperial Palace gardens

A visit to Ginza, the Champs Elysees of Japan

From Tokyo, we flew to Hokkaido and proceeded for our skiing holiday at the Rusutsu resort. The first impression we had confirmed an internet review we had previously read that if Disney were to build a ski/snow resort, it would look a lot like Rusutsu. While the outdoor amusement park was closed for winter, the theme park concept extended indoors in some areas with a carousel, singing-and-dancing dolls etc. Instead of posting photos of Rusutsu here, we're posting a video that we compiled instead. Enjoy!