Japan experience

Using the holidays from the Chinese New Year we flew to Japan to visit Ricard and Asako, do some sigthseeing and go to ski!

After 3 hours flight, here we are at Tokyo!

Asako came to pick us up from Shinjuku station as Ricard was still at work (the small heater is there because we visited Tokyo on the coldest week of this winter…)

And so we went out so see what Tokyo and Japan had to offer…

Going around Tokyo

Apart from the immensity of the city (and the large number of metro/train lines) and the fact of being surrounded by Japanese people, the most interesting detail was to observe the order that they manage to have even in this chaos. Tokyo is also an extremely clean city.

Highlights: 6 or 7 floor shops focused only on electronics or comics (manga), people sleeping everywhere (the metro seats are really comfortable for that) and the excellent service on restaurants, hotels, etc.

Take a look at the photos ;)

Eating in Japan! That’s yummy!

Japanese people love to eat, as an example, most of the tourist information is focused on the local dishes that should not be missed. We did our best and visited: a meat teppanyaki located on a 51st floor, restaurant with dishes from Okinawa and ramen of all kinds. Funny enough we did not eat any sushi during the whole week!

Tsukiji – Fish market

Where does all the fish being consumed in Tokyo come from? You are right, from Tsukiji, that is a kind of central market (similar to Mercabarna at Barcelona) and it is one of the biggest in the world. You must get up early to be on time (we arrived around 07:00am) to see how they prepare the fish for distribution all around Japan. The tuna auction takes places around 05:00am, and we skipped that. It is also a tradition to finish the visit with a fish based breakfast on a nearby restaurant but we preferred a coffe with milk.

Only in Japan

No additional comments needed. There are things that you can only find while in Japan…

Hakone trip

To get out from the city we decided to go to Hakone. We did the whole circuit (bus, train, cable car, ropeway and even a pirate ship!). Being a volcanic area, there are a lot of hot springs to enjoy in most of the hotels, that was a nice experience. During our visit it was snowing most of the time, as a side effect we have very nice pictures :)

Day trip to Kamakura

And still acting as good tourists, what else could be better than to visit couple of temples and Budhas around the Japanese coast? we went to Kamakura and nearby towns. Just in case, the temple provides detailed instructions on how to pray.

Weekend at Tegendai

It is public knowledge the Albert addition to the snow and the ski, so we organized a weekend trip to the mountains and a ski resort. Thanks to Ricard and l’Asako, we could go to Tengendai Kogen, in the Yamagata region. The resort was small, but with perfect snow and beautiful landscape. Sun, cold, wind and snow… we had it all in just 2 days. As après-ski a good dinner with regional dishes (yummy!) and hot spring outside in the middle of the snow. Would you like to try?? :)