Backpacking Through Asia with Rony, Talia and THREE kids!

Santorini Park, 1000 Sook Food and Farm, and Wat Huay Mongkol Temple In Cha-Am And Hua Hin, Thailand

2017-04-14T20:56:00.000+03:00

Our first full day in Hua Hin was chock-full of activities. When we woke up, our plan was to take a bus to a bus that would take us to Santorini Park in Cha-am, a town just north of Hua Hin. However, the bus that goes to the bus only comes once every 30 minutes and it would have been too long of a wait, so the staff at our awesome condo complex called a cab to ask for the price - it was 600 baht one way or 1300 for the driver to stay there and bring us back when we were done.

Yes, please!

We ended up getting so much more than we bargained for! The driver spoke good English and showed us all kinds of places along the way, and we ended up seeing a lot more than we would have seen in two days had we been dependent upon public transportation. Hua Hin is much smaller than Bangkok and public transportation is basically a couple of buses, taxis, and tuk-tuks - they don't have a metro or light-rail system.

Our first, and longest, stop was Santorini Park, a gorgeous complex that has two separate sections: one is a small town that looks like Santorini, Greece, that has a bunch of rides like a Ferris Wheel, water boats, trampolines and a carousel, and the other is a water park, which looked awesome, but the twins are afraid of water that is in movement, so we know from the get-go that we wouldn't be going there. What we have at our Airbnb is plenty and enough at their ages.

The way it works is that each ride is 120 baht (about 12 shekels/$3) so not so bad at all, as long as you don't go crazy and on a million rides. There's a pass that anyone who is 110 cm tall can get for 495 baht (=4 rides and a bit) so if you go on five or more - it's worth it. Sophie is 107 cm. We literally checked the day before. Whoops, right? Wrong. They measured her and we told her to stand on her toes a bit and it was enough, she got the pass. We all went on the merry go round, and Rony and the twins got off and Sophie stayed for another round. She went to the second story of the carousel and I didn't mean to stay on, but suddenly we were moving so yey for quality mother-daughter time.

Our next stop was for ice cream because it was 5 million degrees outside again. It was delicious and so needed. Chloe turns hot pink the moment we walk outside - it looks like she's really suffering from the heat, but she doesn't complain at all, so we aren't positive.

Side note: I mentioned that the kids have been getting tons of attention, and Chloe in particular. We haven't yet been able to figure out what it is that make people jump at Chloe all the time for photos, many times ignoring the other two kids altogether. They don't care, especially since they have already posed for so many photos that Ethan has literally been telling random people no more photos. Rony thinks that the pink, chubby cheeks and curly hair must be a big part of it. She also plays along really well and flashes her smile at everyone. I don't know, but it's sure fun having her get so much attention when it's usually Ethan who does back home. I hope she doesn't need rehab when we get back home.

We went on to the next stop, which was water boats, but that's only from 100 cm or 110 cm, so the twins couldn't go on. Rony went outside with them for something else, and every place they went, they were told they were too young - even the gymboree! It was very very frustrating for them. We arrived very close to when the park opened, and it was very empty. Sophie was alone on the boats, so I am pretty sure she rode a lot more than the 10 minutes that she was supposed to ride.

The view from the Ferris Wheel - this is mostly the water park

We met back up with an extremely frustrated Ethan, Rony and Chloe. We all went up on the Ferris Wheel and the kids had an awesome time. Surprisingly, none of the kids were afraid of the height. Fun fact: Ferris Wheel is capitalized because it was invented by a guy named Mr. Ferris.

From there, I took Sophie to the trampolines, the kinds that come with a harness. She has been wanting to go on one forever and I always felt she was too young, but these were slightly smaller than what we have in Israel so I told her to go for it - and she was just through the roof ecstatic. Rony took the kids to the gymboree, but they wouldn't let them in since they aren't 100 cm yet (they are about 84 and 87 cm, more or less). There is no reason at all not to let them in there, there's nothing there that's dangerous and there wasn't even anyone there. The only playground said 4-8, but it was even a bit scary for Sophie - who was amazing! Check out her leg-work!

When Sophie got off the trampoline, I told Rony that I'm going to the gymboree and I was able to convince the poor teenager manning the place to let all of the kids go in - double score because the kids got to all play and we all got to be in an air-conditioned space! But there's a caveat - they need to wear socks. Apparently, one needs to walk around with socks in their bag at all times, at least when you are going to attractions for children. So I went back outside to get them socks - thankfully, the Thai are prepared and always sell socks at the attractions where they are needed.

So if anyone asks what shopping we have done in Thailand, our answer will be five pairs of socks.

This was our last stop at Santorini - it was already well passed the twins' nap time, plus we hadn't yet eaten lunch. We rushed outside as quickly as possible and asked the driver to take us to 1000 Sook Food and Farm, which we had read great reviews about. The reviews did not fail us - the food was delicious, even though portions were fairly small (which is true everywhere we have eaten in Thailand so far).

It was already about 2 pm and we were all so hungry that we forgot to ask for the food not to be too spicy. Which, in retrospect, was an awful thing to forget. The kids' food was fine, but our food was whoa. My food was fairly spicy, but Rony's was kill-him spicy and he turned bright red. How red? The servers all huddled by our table and laughed at him. I'm not even kidding. At one point, 2 guys came by the table with a broom, looked at Rony, smiled, said hi to Chloe, and walked away. He was all, "Hey, look at me, I'm holding a broom, I'm going to clean - oh guy turning red haha."

We saw a dessert come to the table next to us and we were like we need dessert. We ordered a magnificent dessert that's absolutely a family dessert, and since the server said it would take 15 minutes, Rony took the kids out to the farm part of the place.

A few minutes later, I get a text message from Rony: Someone gave us free tickets. Makes sense, we've been getting free stuff since we came. Just like in South Korea and Japan when we flew with Sophie when she was one. Asia is clearly our thing.

The dessert was divine and after we finished, I went back to the farm with the kids to see the rest. There are very few animals there, they look well-kept, and the kids enjoyed playing with the rabbits again. The place itself is beautiful and it was very nice to walk around, if you don't factor in the killer heat.

We got into the car, and approximately 12 seconds after sitting down, the twins fell asleep on Rony. I did what every loving, caring, considerate wife would do.

I took a picture.

Our next stop, which was 100% thanks to the driver suggesting it on the way there, was the big Buddha at Wat Huay Mongkol Temple. The twins didn't wake up so we put them in the stroller so they could continue to sleep and I walked up to the top with Sophie. They were still asleep when we got back to the car, but we made them wake up as it was already 5:30 pm. We made a quick stop at the grocery store to buy diapers, water, and some fruit, and then headed back. We got back to the condo around 6:15 PM - we left at 10 am! We ended up paying the driver a more than he asked for (after adding more for the extra stops and time), and it was such a great day. We were very lucky to get him and we absolutely would not have done and seen as much had we not had him. Chances are, we would have eaten at the park and gone straight back home without the rest of the stops.

Obviously, at this point, the day was over for us. We ordered a pizza and all went to sleep, though it took the kids about 400 hours to fall asleep because they had napped late and Ethan's mission in life is to not let anyone sleep early right now.

Rony and I were insanely excited about the next day - we got to visit the WFFT where we had volunteered 6.5 years before! But more about that in our next blog post.

Bangkok Day 3: The Aquarium, The Kids Perform On The Train, And We Arrive In Hua Hin

2017-04-13T18:01:00.001+03:00

Day 3 (this trip has been going by entirely too quickly!) was mostly at the aquarium. The Bangkok Aquarium is known as one of the best aquariums in Asia, which we could totally understand. Pro tip: Siam Paragon Mall has a special discount card that gives you a 20% discount at the aquarium (and also a discount at Kidzania, but we decided not to go since it would be boring for the twins). This can be found at the information booth and you need to show your passport.

When we got on the train, it was so full that we almost had to push the kids on. The good news is that there was nowhere to fall because there was no room to move. So at least we had that. We only had to go 6 stops, so it was a pretty quick ride. After the first stop, Chloe suddenly started singing, fairly quietly, the song How Far I'll Go from Moana and the people around us laughed like crazy. She started singing louder, and more people laughed. Soon enough, the three of them were singing the song at the top of their lungs to the delight of 8 million passengers.

Had there been any room, I would have had the kids walk around with a hat. :-)

We got to the mall and went to the aquarium, passing about 8 more Japanese restaurants (and one McDonald's) - seriously, what is going on here? We wonder if this accounts for the rise in prices in this country.

While the price of transportation is still low, as are accommodations, the price of attractions are very high and completely equivalent to what we pay back home. Diapers are more expensive than what we pay at home on sales, but their diapers are really great, so at least that.

The aquarium was awesome, the kids were totally excited the whole time, running from one place to another. We even got to see a play with real mermaids! (Ha.) All in all, we were there about 2.5 hours, including a quick stop to eat. It's really nice, bu definitely not a half-day activity, at least not at these ages. We didn't have to pay for the twins, but it was still an expensive day out. Nevertheless, everyone had a great time.

By this time, everyone was exhausted. We went back to the apartment, and the kids took a nap. We decided to take it easy for the rest of the day and went to the pool on the roof of the building. OMG the building is so beautiful and the pool is gorgeous (there's also a kiddie pool) and the view is divine.

After getting back and showering everyone we had a light dinner, did the wash (so much better than carrying 2.5 weeks of clothing - and having to do 4 loads of laundry when we return), packed and went to bed.

The following morning, we were picked up at the building and made the 3-hour drive south to Hua Hin. We chose Hua Hin as a location for several reasons, the first being it's proximity to the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand where Rony and I volunteered back in 2010 (and he was also there 3 years earlier). Second, we are not island people, and we did not want to go up north with them this time. Third, Hua Hin is a gorgeous sea-side town that has plenty to see.

We prepared a lot of stuff for the kids to do in the car, but fortunately, after singing the entire Moana soundtrack a few times, the kids all fell asleep, and we actually woke them up in Hua Hin. Score. Let's hope it works this well on the way back. Rony was brilliant and had us picked up at 10 am, which means their nap time would fall on the drive, and it worked perfectly. I married well.

We arrived at our Airbnb in Hua Hin and OMG it is the most amazing place ever. The building is beautiful and the apartment is gorgeous, but the really wonderful part is their swimming pool for the kids, which has the water splashing for about 2 hours a day, but is open all day long.

Sophie went ballistic when she saw that she was going to be sleeping on a bunk bed (our Facebook friends have probably seen the video). We changed clothes and went right downstairs to the pool for about an hour.

After showering, we went to the Night Market where we met my camper from Texas! It was a very exciting reunion, seeing as we hadn't seen each other in around 17 years - the last time I saw her, she was 9 or 10 years old! We had dinner at the Hua Hin Seafood restaurant - the food was excellent! The staff, of course, was in love with the kids and brought out two rocking horses for the kids to ride. Rony was commended for having such great kids because they took turns riding them.

We drugged them.

Not really.

At this point, they were exhausted and we took a Tuk Tuk back to the condo. Seeing as it is a holiday here in Thailand now, the Songkran, there was a lot of traffic and a lot of people in town. We'd like to say the kids fell asleep straight away, but they were up until almost 11 pm at this point, since they were so wired, so we gave them away and continued on the trip alone.

Not really.

I'd like to say we turned in early ourselves, but considering they were only quiet at 11 pm, early wasn't an option. However, we knew we had a long day ahead with some great activities, so we went to bed fairly soon after that.

Bangkok Day 2 - Dinosaur Planet and Snow Town - Fun with Kids!

2017-04-12T19:09:00.000+03:00

As I wrote in our previous post, the kids passed out around 6:15 pm and we followed suit around 7. As pretty much everything only opens at 10 am, we weren't in a hurry to get up and go out, so we had a slow breakfast and then headed out toward Dinosaur Planet, which was a 10-minute walk from our AirBNB apartment.

A quick word about the apartment: It is situated in a great location, walking distance to a lot of attractions (including the Sky Train) or just a couple of stops away. The building complex is very new and beautiful, the apartment was large enough for us, but it had no spoons and not enough forks. Turns out that the previous renter stole their silverware.

We headed out to Dinosaur Planet a bit later than we had intended because one of the kids had a 20-minute meltdown (feeling right at home in Thailand), and it was during this time that we learned that the word for twin in Thai is buffet (or something along those lines), which makes perfect sense because you have a choice and you want to eat them both up.

Dinosaur Planet, even though small, was really nice, we started out with this movie introducing the place and there were a few rooms where they explained the place and the history of the dinosaurs. At this time, we kept being rushed through the rooms and it felt a bit like our t our guide in Beijing who kept yelling at us to move and when to take pictures.

But I digress once again.

There were a few things to see and rides to go on, like a 3D ride that was actually quite cool and a bit frightening, though Sophie mostly laughed. The kids got to "ride" dinosaurs (which was for an extra fee) and they also dug for dinosaur bones. They kept not wanting to leave anywhere, but it was about 4000 degrees outside (Celcius, Fahrenheit, Kelvin, whatever you want) so we kept looking for air-conditioned areas. The park was fairly expensive considering its size, but the kids had tons of fun so it was worth it. We walked back to the apartment, though this was already nap time, and had lunch at another Japanese restaurant along the way.

This is a great time to mention that I (Talia) kept saying Japan instead of Thailand and Yen instead of Baht for 2 days straight (actually till the end of the trip). It was both funny and annoying, and the truth is that there is so much Japanese in the area now, at least where we were, that my mess-up it is clearly understood. To me at least. To Rony, too, because he married me and he has no choice. But at least he laughs so I have that going for me.

After Ethan napped and the girls did everything in their power to stay awake and make sure the entire building was awake as well, we took the Sky Train to Ekkamai mall, which was 2 stops away. This is where we learned that our decision to leave the stroller at home was wise - there are no escalators or elevators, so you must take the stairs. At some points, there are escalators up to the platforms, but not everywhere.

I have to mention this is only a problem for twin/double strollers. Had we only had one small child, we would have been able to easily fold the stroller and hold the kid in the other hand and this wouldn't be an issue. I don't regret taking the double stroller instead of 2 singles, though, as I think one is more comfortable.

We walked into the mall and it was all in Japanese. At this point, Rony turned around to me and said, OK, I get it.

I have been validated!!!

There were two separate places here that we had wanted to go to and we hadn't yet decided on one. That is, Rony hadn't decided on one, I couldn't really remember what the choices were. But as we were going up the escalator, I saw the sign for Snow Town and said this is the one. I had no idea what it was, but it looked like a cool place.

We paid way too much money and had to also purchase 2 pairs of socks (and we were off easy as we still had socks in the bag from the flight for 2 of the kids). We were given snow boots and we walked in.

We were thoroughly unimpressed. The first room was basically a coffee shop with a Christmas tree and stands that charged extra fees for all kinds of stuff. This was already the second time that day that we saw that you pay an entry fee somewhere and it doesn't include everything. We continued to walk through, already depressed about the fees we paid. We passed a gymboree that looked small yet cool, but wanted to see the snow parts before going to the gymboree.

Once the kids saw the snow they were shocked - they hadn't seen any before. We rented a sled (because yes, additional fees), but took just one and decided the kids would take turns. Rony showed Sophie what to do (being from Texas, I had never sled before myself), and then we took turns also taking the twins, holding them between our legs. Honestly? It was so much fun. After about 15 minutes, someone gave us another sled, the first gift of the day that was given to the kids.

We probably sled for about an hour and a half. We ended up making them leave so we can see more of what the complex had to offer. We went to the gymboree, and thought it is small, it was really nice. Fortunately, the exorbitant price we paid included all-you-can-drink coffee. Yey! It's the little things.

About 15 minutes in, I took a selfie covered in gymboree balls, and some other local mom saw what I did, laughed her butt off, and then came in and did the same - then she called over her friend and had her do the same.

Talia Klein Perez - setting mom trends since 2017.

Once again, we had to forcefully remove them so we could move on to another room after Chloe got a squeaky doll from an employee. The next room we went to was an arcade that the kids really enjoyed, and then we were kicked out because the place closed and we were the last people there and whoops we were there for over 2 hours even though we didn't think we would stay for even one. Had we not been kicked out, we would have absolutely stayed another hour or two - the kids would have totally sled some more. Ultimately, we had an amazing time and it was unquestionably worth the money we paid. Plus, it was an experience that was completely new to 4 out of 5 of us, which is priceless.

The way back was a bit difficult, we were having so much fun that we didn't see it was already 8 pm, well past the kids' bedtime, and by the time we got back it was after 9 pm and the kids were simultaneously exhausted and wired. It took forever to get them to bed, and us as well.

All in all, it was an amazing day, and it was hard to imagine that we could have another wonderful day like that, but we did, and we will let you know about that later on.

Those of you who are our Facebook friends can see the photos there. Since our kids are in them, we aren't really publishing them here on this public forum.

Bangkok - the flights and day one

2017-04-11T20:21:00.001+03:00

Sawadeeka from Thailand!

The kids were, obviously, excited about the flights and the trip, even though they had no idea where we were going. The first flight went well, Aeroflot has totally awesome gifts for kids. Pro-tip: tell them your 2.8-year-old twins are 3. They can't give the gifts under the age of 3, and it's a shame because there is no real reason and the gifts are awesome.

As nicely as the flight went by, and as well-behaved (really) the kids were, it took me (Talia) the entire flight plus another hour on the next flight just to watch one movie.

Why?

Because - Mommy! - every time I - Mommy, I have to pee - wanted to - Mommy! Water! - put my headphones - Mommy, where are my crayons? - on to watch - Mommy, I have to pee again - the movie I kept - Mommy, I want Daddy - being interrupted.

But I digress.

The headphones for the entertainment set are horrible, they are the type you put in your ears and we couldn't get the kids to use them because they were too big and uncomfortable. These are the type with a double-plug anyway so it isn't like bringing your own would be beneficial.

We rolled through Moscow Airpot, where apparently babies never ever have their diapers changed, thus leaving us to change the kids' diapers on a bench, and got on the next flight. After we boarded, I reminded Rony to say the twins are 3 when they come by with the gifts, which we did.

While it was uneventful as far as turbulence was concerned, the flight was pretty awful. We had purposefully taken a night flight and were just not permitted to sleep. The flight took off at 9:30 pm and landed at 10:30 am, so by all accounts, we should have been able to sleep.

But, no, and lack of sleep is a form of torture and babies know it and so does Aeroflot. UGH. 4 hours into the 8.5-hour-flight, people (including ours) fell asleep. Within half an hour, the cabin crew announced that everyone is required by law to fill out immigration forms for when we land - in freaking 4.5 hours! WTF? Was it really necessary to wake everyone up for this? So they hand out the forms, people start filling them in (not us because PFFT, no) and then they turn off the lights.

SRLSLY?

The announcement woke one of the twins, I think Chloe, and her crying woke Ethan, or it could have been the other way around, I have no idea because it was freakin' 2 am or 5 am or I don't know what time, but we should have been sleeping. We finally were given permission to go to sleep 4 hours into the flight.

For one and a half freakin' hours. No, that's fine, we don't need sleep. No worries. We will definitely not be taking Aeroflot again for an overnight flight. It was horrible. We had taken it specifically so everyone would sleep through the flight and no one did. The kids maybe slept 2 hours.

We landed in Thailand, the country that shall henceforth be called Land of the Chloe, and, by the time we got our luggage, the kids had been hugged, kissed and photographed by close to a dozen people. Everyone stops us everywhere we go, not unlike with Sophie when we were in South Korea and Japan. While they think all of the kids are cute, they are particularly enamoured by Chloe. Looks like she is the epitome of beauty here in Thailand.

We took a cab to our AirBNB apartment, which is perfectly located, put our stuff down and went on a search for food. Our host told us that we are very close to a mall so we went there. It's a gorgeous mall - and completely high-end: Gucci, Armani, Tiffany's - you know, our kind of shopping, especially since creating 3 humans in 2.5 years.

We went upstairs to the food court and ate a Japanese restaurant (ha) and, while Rony went to the grocery store, I got the kids ice cream. Then I get a text message from Rony (we both got data packages).

Rony: When you're done come to the grocery store
Me: OK
Rony: You have to come now
Me: Hold on, the kids are getting free stuff again

We came and, as omigosh there was the biggest Peppa Pig display I had ever seen.

Which isn't difficult seeing as it is the only display of Peppa Pig I had ever seen.

We let the kids pick some Peppa Pig cookies because we are on vacation and it isn't like we can be coerced to get it at home.

As it turns out, the store is a Japanese grocery store with a bunch of stuff that we used to eat in Japan and all kinds of things that Rony loves and it's entirely possible that we may have to leave one of the children here to accommodate everything Rony wants to buy when we get back.

When we were checking out, we suddenly heard the song Happy come on and then clapping. What? We walked outside and OMG, y'all, a flash mob of mall employees. I love Thailand.

We got back to our apartment, showered the kids and they went to bed.

At 6:00 pm. We barely kept them up past 5.

I quickly went to the 7-Eleven by the condo to get some stuff for breakfast and happened upon a parade! This week is the Thai festival Songkran, and this parade is one of the first parts of the celebration. I went to get milk and saw a parade. Score.

We also went to sleep around 7, after Googling "What to do in Bangkok at 6 am with children," because we needed a backup plan.

Turns out there isn't so much to do at 6 am in Bangkok with children, maybe a market. But that's OK because they ended up sleeping until after 7 am so score again.

In our next post, we will talk about day 2 in Bangkok, Dinosaur Planet and Snow Town.

We have grown by 2 more kids - and embarking on another trip to Thailand and Singpore!

2017-04-06T15:00:00.001+03:00

Wow. It's been a while. A long while. Three years, to be exact. When we started this blog, back in 2010, we were a young, unmarried couple embarking on a 4-month trip in Asia. Then, 2 years later, we returned to Asia with a one-year-old baby. That one-year-old is now five and she has a sister and a brother who are just over 2 and a half-years-old - twins! We've done a lot over the past 3 years :-)

Tomorrow, we will be taking our first long trip since the twins were born. When they were 1, we went on a cruise through Europe - just one hour time difference. Last year, when they were just under 2 and our eldest was just over 4, we flew to Paris for a wedding and spent a few marvelous days in Disneyland Paris! And now, we will be flying to Thailand and Singapore!

In Thailand, we will be in Bangkok and Hua Hin, a smallish town that's close to the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand where we volunteered back in 2010. Remember? Talia was with the elephants and Rony was mostly with the bears.

We will be doing a day tour at the WFFT with the kids - we specifically planned Hua Hin just so we could come visit. Since the twins still nap, one of us (probably Rony) will go back to our Airbnb place with them after lunch while the other will stay with Sophie for the second part of the day. It looks like it will be an awesome experience!

In Singapore, we will be meeting our friend, Winnie, who we met at the WFFT - she also volunteered with the elephants. Last year, she visited Israel and we got to see her and this year we will be visiting her. It's just so awesome that we are still in touch with so many people who we met during our one week at the WFFT.

Anyway, stay tuned, we will be updated the blog while we are away. Now that we have all these children, we are significantly more tired than we were back in 2010 so we may not be as funny as before. We apologize in advance.

For now, wish us luck on our loooong flights to Bangkok. The kids don't know yet, but Talia made them each a bag of goodies for the plane that will, hopefully, keep them entertained for a nice portion of the flight.

See you soon!

This is for Chloe, our 2.8-year-old daughter. The lunch box is actually meant to hold the small pieces of the train set and the dinosaurs

This is for Sophie, the 5-year-old. She's easier to pack for because she can entertain herself more with workbooks and can also play travel-size games with us.

This is for Ethan, our 2.8-year-old son. The lunch box is actually meant to hold the small pieces of the train set and the dinosaurs

This is how they will receive their packages on the plane.

Takayama and Shirakawa-go - our last destinations

2013-04-15T12:07:00.000+03:00

As we mentioned, while we expected Takayama to be a whole in the ground, it's really quite charming and we really love it. On the evening that we arrived, we didn't really go out - we just went to the Family Mart to get some dinner and milk for Sophie and turned in fairly early.

On our first full day, we decided to take it easy and tour the town, a decision that we are really happy we made. We ran into a really sweet couple a few minutes after we started and they were looking for some specialty needlepoint shop that her sister had recommended. It seemed that we were going the same way, so we walked into the shop when we found it, and that was just a gem! We ended up getting a few gifts there, but it was really hard to choose, because the place was so great!

The whole town is just picturesque, at least the parts of the old town. Our hostel is really close to the old city, so it was a lot of fun and not too far away, though we ended up literally walking around the whole town!

We walked into virtually every store we saw, bought a few more souvenirs, and tasted loads of local foods (the stores had a bunch of samples of, like, everything, which was a smart decision since we ended up buying some).

We literally walked around town all day, had lunch, walked some more, saw some more cute shops, and watched Sophie play with every dog that she saw.

We turned in really early (like 8:30 early) because we were exhausted, and we knew we had a very long day ahead of us.

This morning, our alarm clock (Sophie) only went off at 7:45 - late wake up!! But of course, it meant we got a later start than we had intended.

We walked to the old city again where the famous Takayama Festival had begun. During the day, there were tons of cute stands selling everything you could possibly think of. At 11 there was a puppet show, which they have been doing for hundreds of years, and while it was cute, it was really long, so we broke off and had a snack.

We then walked over to the river where all of the floats that would be in the parade later were displayed. It's a really good thing that we had gone to see the floats in the morning, because they were harder to see at night!

Anyway, we grabbed a bite to eat for lunch and got on a bus for Shirakawa-go, an old town about 50 minutes away whose houses are protected world heritage sites. The town is gorgeous!

But a moment about the bus ride. We took a tour(ish) because it was about $10 per person cheaper than going on the regular bus, and the bonus is we got a really awesome tour guide. He was so funny. He kept explaining what we were looking at, but he was hilarious, making jokes and just explaining everything in a really funny way. He even went by each couple/family and took pictures of them for them on the bus!

They took us to a really gorgeous lookout (that we wouldn't have been able to get to without a car), and then we parked and were left to our own devices (with a map).

A world heritage site, the houses in Shirakawa-go are built in a very special manner. Many of the houses are open to the public (at a fee), and have been converted into museums. Some of the houses were stunning! If we ever get rich and built our own home, we will definitely be borrowing some of the Japanese architectural styles.

A few minutes after we arrived, Sophie fell asleep, which was great because it was really late and she hadn't napped, and we would have all suffered if she hadn't napped. Luckily we took the back carrier so we didn't have to deal with stroller in very tight (or impossible) situations.

We reluctantly got back to the bus and went back to Takayama, but the day wasn't over yet, because the highlight of the Takayama Festival is the parade at night!

The parade was really pretty, which you can't tell by the pictures, so we didn't take too many. Sophie had a great time and waved at a lot of people. She also started saying "chien" today, which means dog. So that's her fourth word (First - this in Hebrew (and English), second - thank you (in Hebrew), third - sit! (in French)).

We left the parade before it ended, not because it was boring, but because we knew we needed to get Sophie to bed, and it was fairly repetitive at that point. Sophie fell asleep pretty quickly, so we sat down in the room with two beers to celebrate the end of our trip. I mean, they threw us a parade and everything!

Pictures from Takayama (two links, the second is from the Kyoto and Takayama album): https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152728287190364.1073741838.906005363&type=3 and https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152725771680364.1073741837.906005363&type=3

Back to Kyoto - for 24 hours, that is

2013-04-14T14:47:00.001+03:00

Our last day in Tokyo was laid back, we really needed some rest, and wanted to just do some shopping. We spent some time in the hotel room just goofing around, and it was a blast! We are really going to miss spending so much time with Sophie when we get home, which is the hardest part of leaving.

While traveling with a toddler is great, it is much more tiring than our last trip, even though we saw three times as much last time. We thought we hadn't stopped moving for a second, but now we see that we had - each time we had a train ride, be it 2 hours or 6 - we rested.

Even if all we did was write blog posts or read, we had quiet time. We have no quiet time now, and Sophie always needs to be in movement and entertained, so we are finding ourselves a lot more tired than we ever were last time. In retrospect, 3 weeks is enough, the last couple of days have been exhausting.

Anyway, the train to Kyoto isn't very long, about 2 hours, however when we arrived at the station to get tickets, the next 2 trains were sold out, so we had to wait an hour and a half for a train, which got us to Kyoto later than we had planned. This isn't the first time this has happened to us on this trip, and it hadn't even happened once on the last one, which just shows that there are tons more tourists now than the last time, and you must get tickets ahead of time, if possible.

Luckily for us, Sophie slept most of the way. She is so cute when she's awake, but boy is she adorable when she's asleep! We bought some bentos on the train, and they were delish! When we arrived in Kyoto, it was cold and raining, and even though we technically arrived pretty early, around 3 in the afternoon, we couldn't do anything because of the weather. This was very depressing for us because 1) After a long train ride, you want to walk, 2) Finding a way to entertain Sophie for 3 hours was going to be a problem, and 3) We only had 24 hours in Kyoto.

So we went to the only place we could go in that weather - Nishiki food market! Talia had been there last time, but Rony hadn't, anｄ the market has such interesting booths, that it was great going there a second time. We didn't take pictures this time because it was exactly the same, but you can see the pictures from our last trip to the Nishiki market starting here.

We only spent one night in Kyoto, but it was the same hostel we were in last time, and the Japanese guy who speaks Hebrew was still there! He totally remembered our friend, Maya, who came with us last time because she had recommended tons of Hebrew music to him. He talked to Sophie in Hebrew and she was just floored. It was the most comfortable bed we had on the entire trip. K's House, in case anyone was wondering.

The following morning, we tried to get up early because we wanted to make sure we get tickets early enough to avoid any problems. After grabbing a bite to eat, we took a bus to the Golden Pavilion. The bus was soooo slow, we felt like we were back in Israel. However, the bus was very clear in what the next stops were, and whenever we passed a tourist spot, a recording came on letting us know where we are and the history of the area, which was great. Fortunately, Sophie slept for part of this ride, which was helpful because there was no way to entertain her there.

The Golden Pavilion, which Rony had visited last time (but Talia hadn't), is stunning. The area surrounding it is also gorgeous, and Sophie had a great time walking around. At this point, she already understands that if we put the shoes on, it means she will get to walk, and she gets so excited that she can't stop screaming with glee and flinging her arms!

By the time we were done, it was too late to go to the castle we had intended on going to, but we are already used to it. So, you know, next time. ;-)

We got back to the train station with enough time left to calmly get our bags, which we had left in lockers in a station, and find our train. We had a short train ride and then we switched to a longer ride (about 2.5 hours) to Takayama. This train was actually hilarious - unlike other trains, this one had some kind of a tour guide that kept telling us to look to our right and left, accompanied by countless stories about what we are looking at! It was actually really awesome, especially since Sophie was asleep the whole way.

Takayama is a small town that is basically traveled to only twice a year during the festivals, one of which takes place in a couple of days. While we originally thought it was a hole in the ground, it is actually quite charming and we are really enjoying our time here!

When we arrived, it was really cold - so cold that it started to snow an hour later. Sophie's first snow! She, of course, was unphased. We basically only went to get some milk for her and dinner for us and came back.

Pictures from Kyoto (and a few from Takayama, but the post is already really long): https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152725771680364.1073741837.906005363&type=1&comment_id=39492097&offset=0&total_comments=1&notif_t=photo_album_comment

Tokyo, Kamakura, and Yokohama (again)

2013-04-13T15:33:00.001+03:00

We're sorry it's taking us longer than before to post, traveling with a toddler is fun, but exhausting!

Our time in Tokyo was really only meant to be a base for the day trips we wanted to take outside of Tokyo. Our next stop was Kamakura, a town famous for the second-largest Buddha in Japan. We hadn't made it to Kamakura last time, so we were very happy to make it this time.

While Kamakura has a very famous festival, we missed it by a week - it starts the day before we leave. Oh, well, next time. :-) However, Kamakura is far from boring, and it was probably the place where we saw the largest amount of tourists since we had arrived (other than the penis festival, that is).

Our first stop was one of the famous shrines in Kamakura, Hase-dera, and it was gorgeous. Sophie got to use her new shoes again, though she still isn't that used to them. She loved the rocks. We go and show her beautiful gardens with wonderful flowers and plants and shrines, and she only wants to play in the rocks. :-)

Walking through Kamakura was fun to begin with, the streets lined with many cute shops and boutiques, and of course the 100 Yen shop that Talia wanted to go to was closed. Oh, well.

Our next stop was the famous Amida Buddha statue at Kotoku-in. Apparently this Buddha had been in a structure that was destroyed by a Tsunami in the late 15th century, but the Buddha remained standing, and the building around it was never rebuilt.

Sophie had, blessedly, fallen asleep while we were visiting the great Buddha, that's why she isn't in the picture - we didn't forget about her. ;-) A really nice Australian family took the picture for us, and the daughter gave Sophie a game that they got in a Happy Meal from McDonald's (bringing our tally of McDonald's Happy Meal games to 2 out of 0 meals that we had ordered).

We chatted for a while about our travels and then went to have lunch, where something very odd was on the menu. We have yet to figure out what those are...

We have to mention the subway in Kamakura - it is a very old-fashioned train, and we loved it! It was just very quaint, and even though surely that wasn't the purpose, it was fun feeling like we were going backwards in time.

After lunch, we headed back to the train station and walked over to nearby Danzakura, which leads up to a temple, to see the sakura, but we had missed it by a few days, and while beautiful, the trees were barren. So we turned back,　after hunting for yet another lost pacifier. May it rest in peace in the mouth of a Japanese baby, amen.

The train station in Kamakura is really funny. While it's great that they have so many elevators and escalators, especially for such a small town, some of them are quite ridiculous, covering only 7 stairs!

Our final stop for the day, on the way back to Tokyo, was Yokohama again to visit the local China Town. The area was very pretty and they had a lot of interesting items on sale, however they do not know how to be a proper China Town and their prices were sky high! We did, however, buy Sophie a costume for next year, so yey!

The highlight of China Town was running into the shooting of a really weird sci-fi movie. While Talia comes from the industry, it was still tons of fun to watch, especially since it was basically a kung fu movie without any sound. :-)

Pictures from Kamakura and Yokohama: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152718156235364.1073741836.906005363&type=3

Tokyo and the Penis Festival in Kawasaki

2013-04-10T09:06:00.002+03:00

Since we had already seen the great view of Mount Fuji, we decided to forego our original plans (another view of the mountain) due to the weather. We ended up being really lucky that we arrived so early the afternoon before - we could barely even see the mountain that morning (there was a view from the hostel). We felt bad for all the others there who weren't going to be able to see it properly - it's a very long way to come and not see Mount Fuji.

Anyway, we left around noon and had lunch at one of the train stations where we switched trains. There was this great, tiny ramen shop, exactly the type we love: You put your money in a machine, select what you want, get a ticket, and come to the counter. Within 4 minutes you have your food, and it is way healthier than any fast food we can get back home!

We arrived in Tokyo fairly early, but we were pretty beat from the long way there. Our hotel is really nice, but it just confirms our opinions that hostels are a million times better than hotels. They are just so much homier, it's great fun getting to know other people and hear about their travels, and there is loads of advice plastered all over the walls, not to mention the great staff that is really knowledgeable about the area.

Our hotel is located in a great place, just two stops from Tokyo Station (think Grand Central Station, but tons bigger and way more confusing, and not because of the Japanese). As it turns out, this area is the #1 spot in Tokyo for books, and the Klein Perez family loves books, so we just walked a bit among the shops and just had a lot of calm fun. It was raining and too late to really see anything, plus we had spent a lot of time in Tokyo on our last trip, so there wasn't anything major we still wanted to see.

The next morning, it was supposed to rain, so we split up to keep Sophie dry: Rony took her to this amazing indoor playground for kids, called Children's Palace) where she had an amazing time. Ordinarily, Talia would have given up the camera so that Rony could take pics of Sophie playing, however she went to the Penis Festival in Kawasaki, and if you don't have a pictures, it didn't happen.

You read right. The Festival of the Steel Phallus, to be precise. It's one of the last remaining fertility festivals in Japan. It's located in Kawasaki, about 25 minutes outside of Tokyo. The festival is actually a lot smaller than we expected it to be, but it was definitely worth the trip for Talia (and definitely not for Rony and Sophie).

Right when you arrive at the shrine (yeah, the festival takes place at a place of worship, which, by the way, also has a kindergarden), you are greeted by this nice guy:

They have all kinds of stands there, selling penis whistles and bandanas with reproductive organs on them, and also carving competitions:

Best of all, tons of candy! Really expensive candy, which originally I wanted to buy for work, but it was way too expensive.

Then the parade began, and Talia had a great spot. This was her favorite float, because it's lead by some really awesome and really creepy-looking ladies.

After the festival, Talia returned to the hotel to find Sophie and Rony trying to sleep. 15 minutes later, having given up, we all went to the Imperial Palace gardens, located fairly close to our hotel.

The palace itself is not only closed to the public, but can't be viewed, but the park itself is gorgeous, and this is a famous bridge:

We saw Israelis there, so we pretended not to understand, as usual. Someone overheard us talking, though, and she apparently spied on us, but we did not surrender any information!

Exhausted from so much activity that day, we made our way back to the hotel and decided to splurge on some nice, homemade McDonald's! As Rony and Sophie waited for Talia to arrive, Sophie received yet another gift - one of the McDonald's Happy Meals toys! Boy, have we been getting a lot of gifts!

We all fainted into bed, and the following morning, Talia took Sophie to the Children's (petting) Zoo and Rony went book shopping for himself. Or, at least, the plan was to go to the Children's Zoo, but as know on this trip, any correlation between our plans and what happens is purely coincidental.

Sophie fell asleep literally after we got off the Subway, so we sat in the park outside the zoo to let her sleep (a tired baby is an annoying baby, you can quote us on that one). Outside the zoo was a really great playground, and when Sophie woke up, her eyes shot open in so many directions so quickly that Talia thought they would seriously come out of their sockets.

As it turns out, the Children's Zoo was closed that day, but the playground itself was really fun, and Sophie was just going crazy on all the different contraptions. "This! This!" So Talia would take her there after literally three seconds, she would shriek and then point in a different direction, "This! This!" It was tons of fun, but incredibly exhausting.

After the playground, we went shopping! We went to the famous 100 Yen Store, Daiso, near Harajuku station, which is 3 floors of awesome, and then walked up and down Omotesando searching for awesome presents for our families, of which we found none. However, we did make it to Kiddie Town, a 6 (!!!) floor toy store that had an AnPanMan doll, which Sophie loves, and that alone made it worth it. She plays with it all the time! There is an entire floor dedicated to Hello Kitty and one for Snoopy, and boy, is that place incredible.

Our next and final stop that afternoon was a kids store where we bought Sophie her first pair of shoes. She's been wanting to walk a lot here, and the leather soft-sole shoes weren't cutting it anymore. We also replaced a couple items that we lost along the way. :-)

Here are the pictures from our first couple of days in Tokyo: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152718156235364.1073741836.906005363&type=1#!/media/set/?set=a.10152716081785364.1073741835.906005363&type=3

The Ramen Museum in Yokohama and Mount Fuji!

2013-04-06T12:00:00.000+03:00

We left Osaka and our amazing hostel behind to finally see Mount Fuji! We only saw it on the train last time, and Talia didn't even get to see THAT because she had fallen asleep! Sophie spent the rest of the time flirting with everyone on the train. Of course, pictures were taken, and an older couple on one of the trains gave her cookies, as well.

Since it is a very long way (about 6 hours all together), we decided to stop halfway through in Yokohama and go to the Ramen Museum! The museum tells the history of ramen in a language we don't understand (Japanese, yo), but downstairs is where the action REALLY happens.

The bottom 2 floors are a reconstruction of Tokyo in 1958, which is when instant ramen was invented. The streets are narrow, there are games that were played on the street back then, and there are so many tiny touches there that made it so much fun. And, of course, the place is FILLED with ramen restaurants, which we ate at.

DELICIOUS.

We then took a few more trains to get to our town by Mount Fuji, and mercilessly, Sophie slept almost the entire way. SCORE!

We arrived easily at our hostel, and Talia saw a gorgeous postcard of Mount Fuji at the reception, and it turned out that the exact spot is only a 20 minute walk from our hostel!

Luckily, the girl working at the hostel told us that there are steps to go up, so Rony loaded Sophie up on the carrier and off we went. What she DIDN'T tell us is that it was a 20 minute walk to get there, but a 400-stair climb to get up after that!

It was exhausting and we seriously don't know how we made it, especially Rony with Sophie on his back, but we did, and boy, was it worth it!

Pictures from Yokohama and Mount Fuji: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152705771380364.1073741833.906005363

Osaka days 2 and 3 - The Science Museum, Universal Studios Japan, The Osaka Castle, Sakuranomyia, and Horyuji Temple

2013-04-05T17:08:00.002+03:00

We started our second full day in Osaka at the science museum, which is such an amazing place for kids! First of all, it is free for kids up to the age of 15!

The best part is that you can touch EVERYTHING and there are a lot of activities there, so Sophie had a great time pushing buttons, turning things, and just climbing on everything. Yes, sir - we are introducing our girl to science as early as possible!

After the museum, we headed out to Universal Studios Japan! The place is really nice and the rides are tons of fun, but the kids are on their spring break, so the place was FULL and the lines were insanely long.

At one point, we searched for a place to eat at the park and found a great restaurant, smack-dab in the middle of the park, that had sound-proof windows, and it was divine. No, we are NOT old!!

Rony's soup came with STARS in it, and when the dessert came, the waitress came to Sophie with the cheesecake and drew a picture of Elmo on the plate!

After dinner, we walked around a bit more, and then we split up - Rony took Sophie back to the hostel and Talia stayed at the park until it closed at 9 so she could ride the rides she didn't have the opportunity to do before. Best. Husband. Ever.

While this post makes it seems short, we did SO much walking that day, and we were so exhausted when we got back that we couldn't even fall asleep!

The following morning, we headed out to Osaka Castle to see the Sakura. Everything is so beautiful! We took so many pictures, and it's really hard to decide which angle is best, so we just kept walking around. We then walked over to Sakuranomyia, which is another area really loaded with cherry and peach trees in full blossom, and it was just tons of fun to walk around.

Our next stop, after lunch, was about an hour outside of Osaka in a town named Horyuji, where Sophie received a pinwheel from a lady at Tourist Information. This town has the oldest Buddhist temple in Japan, dating back to at LEAST 711! We had planned about half an hour there and then we were going to proceed to Nara, but we didn't realize how huge the place was and we never actually made it to Nara (which we didn't get to really see last time either.)

As we were about to enter the temple area, a man approached us and introduced himself as a Goodwill Guide. Talia had read at our hostel that there are these guides who, for fun and for free, give tours of major tourist locations, and this was one of them. He took us around the temple grounds and gave us really interesting information that we wouldn't have known otherwise. For example, the big communications tower in Tokyo, which was being built when we were in Tokyo 2 years ago, was built in an earthquake-resistant way that was based on the pagoda at the Horyuji Temple!

Since we didn't have time to go to Nara (again!), we decided to go back to Tokyo and decide there what we wanted to do, but we were BEAT when we got in and Sophie had to practically put US to bed.

Here are our pictures from these two days: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152705721865364.1073741832.906005363&type=3

Okayama and Osaka day one: The famous Osaka aquarium, an awesome streetshow, Americamura, and Dotonbori

2013-04-04T13:25:00.001+03:00

We left Kei's house first thing in the morning, and immediately Sophie made friends with yet another small kid who ended up giving her one of his toys as a present, a finger puppet from a famous cartoon in Japan, Anpanman.

We had a 3-hour train ride to Okayama, most of which we all spent sleeping (score!) We had been to the famous Okayama gardens on our last trip, and it was beautiful, but we knew it would be stunning this time because of the sakura, which it was.

We walked back to the train station, because we just love walking through Japan! There are very few days that we don't express (to each other) how much we love this country. We took a direct train to Osaka and located our hostel, J-Hoppers, in the Fukushima area (not where the tsunami hit, it's a neighborhood in Osaka).

The area is GORGEOUS, a narrow street with a bunch of restaurants and, apparently, this is the "hip place for young people" - or that's what was written on a local map. :-)

The hostel itself is great - the staff is awesome and the room is really big for a hostel - no small thing when you are traveling with a baby. There is even a bathtub here (score!) though Sophie keeps crying in it. The bed is comfortable, and Sophie still subscribes to the 80-20 rule: She gets 80% of the bed, and we get 20%.

She kicks us a lot at night, but we don't mind - we just turn our backs AND PRETEND IT IS A FREE THAI MASSAGE. Are you jealous yet?

By the time we got in, it was time for dinner and sleep (for Sophie), and we got ourselves some delicious food for a stupid price at the 7-Eleven 2 buildings down.

The next morning, we started our day at the Osaka aquarium since it was raining, though we had planned it anyway. Sophie LOVES animals (and, really, any nature), and the Osaka aquarium is apparently #2 in the world - and we can see why!

Even though it was drizzling, there was an AMAZING street show going on outside. While we don't generally stop to watch people juggling, this guy was HILARIOUS. We didn't understand a single word he was saying, but we couldn't stop laughing - it was like watching a dubbed samurai movie! You can watch the video here: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rRbi75-0P0I.

The aquarium itself was spectacular - they built it in a way that you don't feel like you are watching fish in a tank, but in their natural habitat.

And Sophie went BALLISTIC. She wouldn't stop laughing and shrieking with joy, and even pushing other people out of the way so she could see more. About an hour or so in, she lay her head on a chair and fell asleep 2 minutes later on Rony.

We then went to have some lunch at the mall next door, and ended up at an all-you-can-eat BBQ place that was sooooooo delicious! You take any meat or veggie you'd like, dip it in tempura, and into the oil it goes! Wow, that place was awesome.

Our next stop was Americamura and Dotonbori, two areas that are great for people-watching. Talia bought some bento gear at the 100 Yen shop (like a $1 store) and we really enjoyed just looking around and seeing all the random and nifty shops all around - they even have a whole booth dedicated solely to clothes for dogs!

Here are the pics we took from these 2 days - we are clearly taking less pictures than before :-) https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152703332520364.1073741831.906005363&type=3

Fukuoka and Yawatahama - We are home!

2013-04-02T15:50:00.001+03:00

As we mentioned, we were incredibly sad to be leaving South Korea, but at least our vacation wasn't over! We arrived at the airport and were excited to discover that the Koreans just keep on being awesome until you leave!

As we walked towards the check-in counters, we passed a phone-charging station (!!!) and an airport representative informed us that we don't need to wait in line because there is a special check-in for families (!!!)

We checked in, breezed through security, and walked towards the gate where were awesomely surprised to discover a playground! As we waited, Sophie got to slide and play. Of course, this meant that she cried when we had to board the plane, but so did the rest of the kids, so whew.

We had the same great service on the plane - a trash bag, box of tissues, and a small game - and arrived quickly in Fukuoka, Japan. As in Korea, we were removed from the line and passed through customs quickly, got our luggage, and went to the hotel where we had HEATED TOILETS. We are back in Japan!!!

Since Fukuoka was just a pass-through town for us, we hadn't made any plans, but we walked over to the main shopping district - Watanabe-dori - anyway and were really surpised to see all the action. Tourist Information told us where the sakura (blooming of the cherry blossom) is, and we headed in that direction and had a delicious dinner, where we learned Sophie was just as popular in Japan as in Korea.

One really awesome thing about Fukuoka is that during the day, the sidewalks are empty, but at 6:30 pm, minivans suddenly drive up onto the sidewalk, and dozens of Yatai - mini-restaurants - pop up! They mostly serve yakitori - food on a stick - and they have 2 benches or about 8 chairs for guests to eat.

After a good night's sleep (hahahaha, who are we kidding, we haven't slept in 13 months), we headed over to Beppu, where we did nothing, and boarded a ferry to visit our friend, Kei, from our last trip to Japan.

The ferry ride was fairly uneventful, though lots of fun. Sophie made new friends, as usual, who played with her, and we bought bento for lunch! She definitely wore Rony out by running up and down the stairs ( well, up, Rony had to take her down), and expressed an intense desire for 2 men's beers.

Kei picked us up from the ferry (which was awesome) and took us to see the sakura at a park nearby. The Sakura is the best time of the year to visit Japan, and we missed it by a few weeks last time. This time we came JUST in time! It is only a few weeks long and started early this year, so we are very lucky.

Traditionally, families have picnics under the trees, and older people congregate and just have beer (apparently you are supposed to get drunk). Apparently we were quite the spectacle - not only do we have a kawaii (cute) baby, but this town NEVER sees non-Japanese people, somwe were offered beers (Sophie REALLY wanted one) and snacks, and we sat there for a while since it was really nice outside.

We arrived at Kei's apartment where Sophie was greeted by her pug, Anzu, and it was love at first sight - for both! Anzu had never seen a baby before and quickly became her watchdog, which is hilarious considering she's even smaller than Sophie!

Kei organized a really nice do-it-yourself sushi bar for us for dinner and had invited some friends, a few of whom we had met last time, so it was really like coming home for us to a place we knew and people we had met.

The visit was entirely too short. Kei worked most of the next day, and we took it easy - did some shopping, walked around, and ate, and Talia bought some bento supplies for 100 Yen each (about $1), so she is very happy.

The following morning, we left Yawataham early to make our way to Osaka, where we will be spending the next few days. Kei was awesome and brought us a bag of goodies for thelong train ride ahead, including an Anpanman toy for Sophie, which she really loves playing with. She remembered that Talia likes sparkling water and that Rony loves the Meiji chocolate-covered chocolates, and made sure both were in the package.

Sophie updates:

1) She hates sticky rice. This is the first food we have seen her consistantly spit out.
2) she learned how to drink from a straw. It works 3 out of 4 times. Good statistics, but the 4th time is brutal and the drinks ends up everywhere.
3) She has gotten used to the attention, so when she doesn't have groups of people around her, she gets angry and starts acting cute ON PURPOSE, hoping for a reaction from the crowd (it usually works).
4) She drinks real milk now, not formula. We keep it to a bottle in the morning and a bottle in the evening.

Sorry we take a while to update - on the last trip, we would write on the trains,,and that isn't an option right now. :-)

Pics from Fukuoka and Yawatahama: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152695105270364.1073741828.906005363&type=3

Korea - day 4, final day: Gyeongbokgung Palace, the Kimchi Museum, andsome shopping

2013-04-01T16:22:00.004+03:00

Today was our final day in Korea - tomorrow we fly to Japan. Today, for a change, went FAIRLY according to plan. Our first stop was the Kimchi Museum at the COEX mall, the largest underground mall in Korea. And OMIGOODNESS it is huge. It's a miracle we didn't get lost.

Kimchi is a national food in Korea that is served at every restaurant with every meal you have, other than maybe McDonald's. It's fermented cabbage, turnip, or a handful of other vegetables, and it is delicious, but spicy - sometimes too spicy (but yey for our sinuses!)

While we thought it would just be fun, it ended up being really interesting - we even got to sample some kinds of kimchi that we hadn't had yet, and come on, who DOESN'T love spicy chili vegetables at 10 in the morning?

As we made our way out, we saw a bunch of young women dressed in neon blue and OMIGOODNESS we stumbled into a Samsung conference where the were displaying all of their phones and FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, Talia needs a Samsung Note 2 for her birthday. You have 5 months to raise the funds.

After about 20 minutes, Rony managed to pull Talia out of there, though he couldn't get her to shut up for half an hour, BUT HE KNEW WHAT HE WAS GETTING HIMSELF INTO WHEN HE MARRIED HER, so really, he can't complain.

But we digress. Regretfully, we left this really awesome mall because we had palaces to see, souveniers to buy...

We had read online that Gyeongbokgung Palace should take about an hour, and it was gorgeous. Like the other palaces, it has a very rich history that can be summed up in one sentence: Built 600-700 years ago, the king held his meetings here, and then the Japanese burnt it down. This particular palace, while stunning, is a complete reconstruction from about a decade ago. Our closets are older.

Even though it was supposed to take about an hour, after almost 2 hours we left before we even saw everything because we almost ate dirt. We had lunch at the palace restaurant because we were incapable of walking farther, and we have to say, each place we ate here has been incredibly delicious!

Our next stop was Insa-dong, again, because it is a great place to buy souveniers and we wanted to get some more lf that awesome candy we got the last time for our families.

We headed back to the hotel for our last night in South Korea, not before taking our picture at the (Hoppa) Gangnam (Style) station, because, dude, they check your pictures at the airport (not really).

As Rony put Sophie to sleep, Talia ran out to the Lotto Mart nearby to buy the really awesome rain and wind stroller cover that all the babies here have. We hadn't seen many babies at ALL, but every single one of them had this cover and it is not only gorgeous, but very functional - it goes all around the stroller, so Sophie can't pulll it off AND THAT IT PRICELESS. Plus, you can open the front flap to take her out and put her in without having to remove it, and she can see through it perfectly and STOP JUDGING US, THIS IS OUR LIFE NOW. The best part is that she LOVES it - she feels like she has her own space and sometimes tries to close it herself when the flap is open.

OK, enough with the excitement about stroller covers, this is the longest paragraph we have written to date!

We were very sad to leave Korea. It's beautiful, the people are amazingly nice (very similar to the Japanese), and we didn't get to see a quarter of what we wanted. We will DEFINITELY be back. On the upside, Sophie won't complain that she only got to go to Korea when she was too small to remember!

At the Seoul subway stations, we had the distinct pleasure of learning how things should be done:

1) If you miss the elevator, you will fall into a sea of water.

2) If there is blood on the floor, find children to clean it up.

3) If you are a mother, do not climb under the rail to skip paying or your daughter will cry with embarrassment.

4) If there is an old lady in the vicinity, help her to her seat by humping her.

5) If a woman is about to give birth - deliver her baby.

We finally uploaded our pictures from Korea - you can see them here.

Korea day 3 - Korean Folk Village and Garosugil (tree-lined street)

2013-03-27T15:14:00.001+02:00

We had yet another difficult night, where Sophie only fell asleep at 1:30 am ("Look! Mama, Dada, I am walking without holding anything!"), we woke up at 7:30 (used an actual alarm clock, thankyouverymuch) and headed out to Suwon where, again, our plans changed AND WE DIDN'T ACTUALLY GO TO SUWON.

Suwon is a town outside of Seoul that has a really nice (so we hear) fortress. The town nearby has the Korean Folk Village, an incredible reproduction of Korean life a gazillion years ago. Having read ahead of time that transportation is more limited to the folk village, we decided to start there.

We read that the subway takes an hour and 45 minutes to arrive, but the bus takes 40 minutes, so we braved the local bus system to save time, an excellent decision in retrospect. We got great directions and instructions from Trip Advisor, and when we located the bus stop, a local man who works there MADE US TAKE A PICTURE OF THE BUS ROUTE so we could tell the driver when we need to get off. Seriously, he wouldn't stop rambling in Korean until we took a picture with our cell phone of that AND another bus route that we weren't even interested in.

Because we had a baby in tow, we sat in the front seat, and once we passed through the small town after the freeway (thank you, Trip Advisor), we told the driver the name of the place in Korean and he told us when to get off.

We KNEW having a baby was a good idea!

What we didn't expect, however, was this incredible love for babies that everyone here has, from teenagers to the elderly. Everywhere we went, everyone who saw Sophie just melted and had to touch her. Luckily for them, Sophie loves the attention. She has been getting so much attention that we will probably have problems when we get back. She'll be all WHERE MY PEEPS BE AT? Good thing she doesn't have a sibling on the way or she'd be all, I'M OUTTA HERE.

We entered the village and were literally trampled by a group of teen girls. Not by accident - they saw Sophie and gushed. They took pictures of her, they took pictures WITH HER, and helped Rony reach 2 important conclusions:

1) We can ask any random stranger on the subway to babysit and have a night to ourselves.
2) Sophie can shoot a commercial in Korea and have her college tuition paid for. Or her braces, y'all have seen her teeth.

Once the group of girls left, ANOTHER group of teens came (boys included) and OMIGOODNESS we've been here for half an hour and we STILL HAVEN'T MOVED. But it was fun, and Sophie put on a show for them, giggling, walking, and stealing their phones, and we are on vacation with a baby, so we can't expect the same trip we had last time, and we knew it from the get go.

We LOVED the folk village. They invested a lot of effort into making it an incredible experience of any age, right down to the tiny details.

Things we learned at the village that we have been doing wrong our entire lives:

1) Sleeping early on New Year's Eve makes your eye rows white, so stay up.
2) When pregnant, dreams of a long eggplant, pepper, and sun mean you are expecting a boy; A short eggplant, green pepper, and moon mean you are expecting a girl.
3) Neighbors should peep in the bridal room on the first night of marriage.

Also, here is a list of jobs we will never have:

1) Tight-rope walker

We had such an awesome time, and, after 2 really cold days, we spent the day without our coats on, and it was splendid. Sophie fell asleep ON SCHEDULE in the early afternoon so we didn't leave to give her more time to nap, and ended up not making it to the fortress because we wanted to try to get her back on a normal sleeping schedule so that, you know, we don't accidentally leave her in Korea cause we are so exhausted.

Having changed our plans AGAIN, we decided to go to Garosugil, the tree-lined street close to our hotel. It is, indeed, lined with trees, however those trees are barren at the end of March, but not all was lost because:

1) We let Sophie walk a LOT, in hopes that she would tire enough to sleep at a normal hour (mission accomplished, she fell asleep around 7:30)
2) We had the most delicious waffle ever created - a walnut waffle topped with caramel and honey-roasted nuts.

Best. Dinner. Ever.

We hope to have pictures up for you soon, but we probably won't until we reach Japan. Talk to you soon!

Seoul day 2 - Changdeokgung Palace and the Secret Garden in Japanese + Namdaemun Market

2013-03-27T13:38:00.001+02:00

Before we continue, we are really sorry there are no pictures yet. This literally affects the quality if our posts.

Anyway, after another difficult night (up from 1-3:30 am), we finally got up and, as seems to be a recurring theme, changed our plans.

We started at Changdeokgung Palace and the accompanying Secret Garden. Since Talia is and overachiever, we already knew that the Secret Garden is only accessibly by guided tour, but we missed the first tour early in the morning and the next was only at 3:30 pm.

We were THIS CLOSE to just skipping the Secret Garden and going to the palace alone when we suddenly realized there was a Japanese tour about to start in an hour (an hour that it would take us to tour the palace anyway) so we got tickets to the Japanese tour. We knew everyone woukd say kawaii (cute) to Sophie anyway, so we understood what was important!

This ended up being a great decision because the Secret Garden is GORGEOUS. We know it's probably stunning when the flowers are already in full bloom, but we loved it anyway. But, boy, were those a tiring 3+ hours!

We had read that there are sections inaccessible to strollers in the garden, so we took our baby carrier instead and made our way to the palace.

And then our backs broke by the time we reached the palace, so we took one of the free strollers (yes!) they had there (as they have at every tourist attraction). In retrospect, this was a wise decision - our own stroller's wheels probably would have gotten ruined anyway, and we were able to access everything but the final stop with the stroller (though we had to lift it up a couple of stairs a few times).

Our next stop was for lunch where we discovered Sophie definitely loves dumplings! Though she's definitely becoming harder to keep up with now that she challenges everything that breathes (and, you know, that doesn't).

After lunch (at 3:30 pm), we returned to our hotel in Gangnam (Style) so we could take a nap because you know what they say, a family that naps together, .

In the evening, we went to Namdaemun Market, which was nice, but not unlike Shuk Hacarmel (the market in Tel Aviv) in Korean. Other than the REALLY weird seafood stuff on a stick (we took pictures).

Our night ended in the morning, after another difficult night where Sophie thought 1 am is an EXCELLENT time to walk around the room unassisted. She'll probably say a new word tomorrow night.

Cute in Korean, maybe.

Welcome to Korea - even before you arrive!

2013-03-25T14:09:00.001+02:00

Sophie: I'm in my pajamas, and it's dark outside, BUT I'M NOT IN BED!

Well, we are pretty sure that's what she was thinking as we walked around the airport. As we got on the plane, we were greeted by an adorable flight attendant who brought us a plastic bag and a box of tissues, "for the baby." Right after take off, we got a really cute bag with stuff in it, including a mini etch-a-scetch-type game that Sophie was totally into.

Sophie, of course, flirted with everyone on the plane, and received 3 offers of adoption from Japan and one from the Philippines.

The flight was a perfect preview to what we would learn when we arrived:

1) The Koreans are adorable and very similar to the Japanese in their desire to make everyone feel welcome.
2) The Koreans LOVE babies (and there don't seem to be many).

The airport deserves its own post, but suffice it to say that it has a movie theatre and an ICE SKATING RINK. For real.

7-Eleven, Dunkin' Donuts, and Baskin Robbins... We are definitely back in Asia!

We easily found our hotel, which is located in the middle of Gangnam (Style). The guy at the lobby showed us a fridge in the entrance full of water bottles, ice coffee, and some drink with picture of corn on it that we have yet to find the courage to sample, and said it is free. There are also warm drinks (not in cans), bananas, and snacks.

Our room is really nice, the bed is wide (though it doesn't feel like it when you sleep with a possesive one year old). It has a ginormous TV and a computer and a fridge, and looks like a zimmer (sorry, non-Hebrew speakers).

It's entirely possible that it is because this hotel was, and kinda may still be, a love motel. At least it sounded like it last night when we heard interesting noises coming from the room next door, but we showed THEM, we had a noisy baby from midnight to 3 am SO THERE.

Other than dinner at a really delicious Vietnamese restaurant (ha), we didn't really do anything last night. We had a lot of plans for today, but you know what they say, jetlag is what happens when you're making plans.

So we reogranized, and it was actually really great. We started at Insa-Dong, a long street with many different stores, galleries, booths, and restaurants. There is one where they make a traditional Korean candy and it's amazing to watch how it's done - they really put on a show! We recorded it on video, so we will upload it once we can.

They sell everything there from furniture and modern art, to candy and Gangnam Style socks (for real, we have a picture). We ate at a great restaurant there and proceeded to Jongmoyo Shrine. They are celebrating 100 years this year, so the place, other than gorgeous, is decorated with a LOT of lotuses.

From there we went to see the changing of the guard at Deoksugung Palace, which didn't happen because the palace is closed on Mondays and, as it turns out, today is Monday, but all was not lost because the palace is right by City Hall, which is really special. The new building was built as green as possible, and when you walk in you just feel peaceful. There is greenage EVERYWHERE, so many different types of plants going all thebway up to the ceiling. And, of course, like many places in Seoul, a free computer station (these are also found at subway stations).

Apropos subway stations, when we were at Seoulleung station, we had the opportunity tonsee the first virtual supermarket! You can walk up to one of many stands throughout the subway (including the gate that opens to get on the train!) and scan barcodes of whatever you want to order, and it is automatically delivered to you! Better than shopping online!

Everyone on the subway is completely enchanted with Sophie. I don't think there is a person above 70 who didn't pet her, and people of literally all ages (especially teens!) kept coming to her. Seeing as she's a performer, this must have been her favorite part of the trip so far.

We decided to take it easy this evening and not go out at night so we coukd try to get over our jetlag and have energy for the long day ahead tomorrow. We promise to post pictures as soon as we can.

Happy Passover, everyone!

Backpacking with a BABY?!

2013-03-18T15:54:00.000+02:00

Who said children cramp your style?

Lots has happened in the two years since we last posted. We got married. We had a baby. And we decided that we have to go back to Asia!

In 5 days, the three of us, baby in tow, will be embarking on a 3.5-week trip to South Korea and Japan. Obviously, this trip will be different - after all, we now have a one year old daughter. Luckily for us, she is an awesome traveler (or at least was when we went to Paris a few months ago), so we can't wait to start this trip on Saturday.

We will still be backpacking - it's so much more comfortable than lugging around suitcases - plus makes public transportation with a baby so much easier.

We have made a few adjustments, though. Instead of moving from city to city every couple of days, we will have a few anchor cities where we stay for 3-7 nights and we will be taking day trips to places we didn't get to last time.

So while we will technically be in Tokyo for a week, we will actually be spending one day in the city at most. Same goes for Osaka.

This blog is being revived so you can stay up to date with our travels and know we're safe (we're talking to you, family!)

On Friday, we took a practice run with the baby carrier, just to make sure we didn't have any surprises ahead:

Success! Her curiosity was peaked. We're going to have fun!

For some reason, it seems Baby Sophie was ashamed to be seen in public with us? We hope this doesn't happen in Korea and Japan!

Talk you Saturday (or Sunday!)

All we missed - and a bonus cherry blossom in Jerusalem

2011-03-11T09:13:00.000+02:00

Now that we're back home and have told you everything about what we did in Japan, it's time to tell you what we didn't have time to see.

1. Kyoto: 2990 temples that we didn't see. Even if we saw all the temples we wanted, there is still so much to see there. Each temple is unique so you should find what you like.

2. Nara: We had only 1 hour there, but we should have spend a day there. The main attractions are located at a park 15 minutes from the train station. There are a few temples to see there and the deer are one of the attractions. So be prepared to spend a few hours there.

3. Mt. Fuji: Since we visited Japan in the winter, we couldn't climb Fuji, but we didn't have time to see it either. Even from afar. But next time we won't miss it. And maybe even climb it. Well, Rony will. Talia will cheer from the bottom. In the AC.

4. Ski: Although we visited Japan in the winter, we didn't have time to ski there. It's possible to ski almost everywhere in Japan. From Tokyo to Sapporo, there are plenty of ski stations, big and small. Japan is considered to be one of the best places to ski in the world, so try it, too, if you have a chance.

5. Hokkaido natural parks: Hokkaido is the northern island of Japan and also the least populated. Half of the island is covered by natural parks and very rare animals can be spotted there. Access to those parks is not that easy, however: It seems that only organized tours and private cars can access those areas. So we passed on it this time. If we had more time, we would have visited some of them.

6. Disneyland: Well, we didn't really plan on going there anyway. But if theme parks is your thing, you should go there. We read somewhere that it's the most visited Disneyland in the world.

7. Himeji-jo. The beautiful castle is under renovation until 2015, so we will wait until then.

8. Kamakura and Aizu-Wakamatsu: These 2 sites near Tokyo are worth visiting according to several guides, but since we had only 3 weeks of the JR Pass and since Rony was sick at the beginning of our stay in Japan, we missed it.

9. Matsushima: One of the 3 most beautiful views in Japan.

10. Kyushu sites: The least-visited island where Beppu, Aso-san, Nakasaki are located. Again, time was short and we had to make hard choices about what to see. Well, next time.

11. Special events: We missed Iwate Snow Festival, but we saw so many others, so it's OK, even though each festival we went to was completely different than the others. We also missed the Taylor Swift concert, which Talia really wanted to go to. We couldn't find tickets for any of her 3 dates.

12. The rest of Japan: There are so many things to see in this country, big and small, that probably another month wouldn't be enough anyway. I guess we'll have to live here some day :)

13. Sakura: The cherry blossom is suppose to be one of the highlights of Japan.
But as a compensation, we saw it in Jerusalem the weekend we got back.

One of the cherry trees that was imported from Japan in the 90s

The festival in Jerusalem was nice, but it wasn't poorly put together, and it basically just made us miss Japan - and the trip - even more.

From the tea ceremony

The trip was amazing. People keep asking us, "So, how was it?" and honestly? We can't give any answer that can possibly convey the past 4 months of ours lives.

We saw so much, did so much, met so many people, and - to our surprise - lost nothing but a hat and a lot of weight. It's a bit hard to readjust to real life, but we have. Rony is back at work, and Talia is starting a new one on Sunday.

We clearly won't be removing this blog - the memories recorded here are amazing to us. We set out with this blog as a way to let everyone know what we were up to, especially since we couldn't email everyone all the time. What ended up happening is that we have amazing record of a 4-month trip that we still can't believe we went on. We really hope that this isn't the last blogpost, and that some time soon we will travel more, and of course, keep updating you through this blog.

Thanks for traveling with us!

Pics from the cherry blossom in Jerusalem:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=629649&id=906005363&l=96d1380845

Japan - All the small things

2011-02-24T18:25:00.000+02:00

There are many small things about Japan that we didn't include in the posts, but were worthy of being spoken about, from the kick-ass bathrooms to the weird Kit Kat flavors. In honor of our marvelous, yet short, visit in this incredible country, we'd like to tell you about all the little things that we love about Japan (some are both of us, some are one of us) in no particular order:

1) Restrooms - Anyone who doesn't understand why a toilet would be on a list of awesomeness has clearly never been to Japan. Other than the fact that they are almost always heated, to the point where you butt's feeling as hurt when one isn't (not to mention your central nerve system), they almost all come with a remote control (with such features as bidet, extra strength bidet, and a sound to play while you are doing your thing), and many of them also have toilet seat sanitizer, which wasn't as exciting for Rony as it was for Talia, but she's a girl. Talia especially liked the bathrooms that had drawings on the doors indicating if the toilet was Western or Japanese, and almost every bathroom - and always at malls and airports - there was at least one that actually had a baby seat in it so that you could sit your baby down while you sit down to do your thing.

Sit or stand?

Their coolest invention, which should totally be used in Israel and other countries with severe water issues, is this one: There are many toilets that, when you flush them, the water comes out through a faucet on top of the tank for you to wash your hands with. The water is then used in the tank for the next time you flush. Can you say genius?!

Such an awesome invention. We need this in Israel

While usually a restroom is an important place that we always need, in most countries it's not usually easy to find outside of one's house. Well, not in Japan. There is always a restroom around: On the street (public toilets), at the mall, on the subway, on the trains, of course. And there are always signs indicating where is the nearest is, on the street and on different maps we had during our trip. That's the Japanese way: Never feel discomfort because you have an urgent need.

2) Kit Kats - The first place that we saw interesting Kit Kats was in Kyoto, a few days after arriving in Japan. They had green tea-flavored Kit Kats and another that we can't remember. As we continued our travels through the country, we found out that there were a multitude of other flavors, ranging from blueberry cheesecake, apple, potato, orange and strawberry, to more "exotic" flavors, such as soy, chili, and wasabi.

Yum... wasabi Kit Kats!

3) Reversible seats on trains - Almost all of the trains we were on, other than the subways trains, had a button on the seat that would let you turn around the chairs. Many times, we boarded a train at the first stop, when the train had just arrived from the same direction we were going in, so when the travelers all got off the train, the cleaning staff went in to clear and turn all the chairs around. There were several times during our time Japan where we reversed our seats, especially one time where the train switched direction mid-way. This is totally cool and we loved it and wish we had to do it more often.

4) Hot beverage vending machines - There are vending machines everywhere in Japan, on every street. While they always have regular, cold beverages as usual (from colas to water to juices), they also have hot drinks, ranging from coffee and tea to hot chocolate and soup (for real). It's soooo nice to be able to have a cheap and warm drink at any point, and we found ourselves looking for a vending machine more than once.

Blue means cold drinks, red means warm drinks

5) Sweet baked goods - While the Japanese say they don't eat many sweets, and, in truth, there isn't that much candy to be found, they excel in the pastry department. Every city and prefecture we went to had their own specialty, and we tried almost every type - and loved almost every one of them. If the most popular filling anywhere we know would be chocolate or vanilla, in Japan it is red bean, which is sweet. All in all - yummy!

SOOOO delicious!

6) Smoking areas - While Japan is incredibly advanced with their smoking areas in the streets - there are many places where you are not allowed to smoke outside and only at specific smoking stations - they are way behind Western countries, and most of the restaurants have smoking areas. While this isn't a "new" thing, we didn't even realize how used to non-smoking restaurants we are until Talia kept walking into the smoking areas. It's gross, but whatever. It's probably our only complaint about Japan.

Smoking areas on the street

7) Music at stop lights - Almost everywhere in Japan, when the pedestrian light turns green, music plays to let you know that you can cross. While Australia always has a special beep that lets you know you can cross, we really loved the music in Japan. In some places, they would divide the music between the four different crossings - simple, but awesome.

8) Pachinko - Pachinko is a Japanese addiction. People can actually make a living off of it. It's a cross between a ping ping machine and a slot machine where you do something or other with balls that we didn't understand but you can read here if you're incredibly bored. Gambling is illegal in Japan, so instead of money (like quarters in Vegas), here they use little silver balls. When they are done playing, they take the silver balls and exchange them for a prize, like a camera. From what we understood, they then take the prize to a pawn shop and receive money for the prize. :-) These places are noisy and always full of people - it's hilarious.

A Pachinko machine

9) High-pitched voices - This is, probably, the hardest point to get across here. All the salespeople in Japan - and we mean ALL of them - speak in an insanely-high voice when customers enter the store. They great people who pass by them constantly, and it's really funny the first time, and freaky every time thereafter. When you see us, please ask us for an imitation. :-)

10) Short skirts in the winter - For some unfathomable reason, Japanese females do not realize that when it is snowing outside. We saw countless girls (not children) wearing short skirts in the freezing weather. In second place was 1992-fashion of tights with shorts over them, which isn't much better. Our only explanation for it is that children in Japan go to school in shorts and short skirts year-round, including winter, so by the time they are in their 20s, they have lost all feeling in their bodies.

Someone who didn't get the memo that the white stuff is snow

11) Tissue advertising - The most popular form of advertising, bar none, was tissue paper. We received countless numbers of tissue packs that had advertising on them. If we were Japanese, we would have received more (some people wouldn't give it to us). What this basically means is that you don't really have a need to buy any tissues, even during the winter. It rocks. :-)

This may be 1/4 of what we got

12) Tourist Information - Tourist information rocks in Japan! Every single place you go has a tourism office with maps and coupons and sometimes even free gifts for travelers! It's marvelous. We came to rely on these offices so much, that we kept lamenting the lack of such offices in Israel. When we returned to Israel, we went to the Information desk at the airport and found out that the Tourist Information in Tel Aviv was closed a few years ago, but there is one at the municipality by Rabin Square and supposedly a really great one at the airport (so make sure you stop by there for information if you need any).

13) Plastic food - Almost every restaurant in Japan has plates outside in a window that shows several of their offered dishes. These are mouth-watering and so realistic. It's obviously plastic, but we seriously entered many restaurants based solely on these replicas. They should have them everywhere.

Doesn't it look realistic?

14) Music on the trains - Every time a train was about to arrive at a station, classical-type music played to get travelers' attention before the announcement. Music played at the train stations, too. It got to where we actually waited for the music to listen to the announcements. :-)

And this is the list that we are able to remember. We know there is a lot that we forgot - we often remembered random things we wanted to add to the list when we were carrying all of ours bags on the way somewhere, so they were forgotten.

Oh, well, guess that means that we will need to go back.

Here are the last pictures from Japan, including some new ones of some of these random things and our last evening:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=620147&id=906005363&l=28e8d0fc0b

Back to Tokyo - Museum of Science and Emerging Technology

2011-02-21T21:10:00.000+02:00

After a long drive back from Morioka, we arrived in Tokyo a bit early - at 6:30 AM. While this normally isn't a huge problem, our hostel's reception doesn't open until 8 AM, so we looked for a place at the station where we could have a cup of coffee and relax until it was late enough to go to the hostel.

Unfortunately for us, the early hour meant that nothing was open at the time. Nothing, that is, except Starbucks. This was probably our second time at a Starbucks during the entire trip: We don't care for the brand and it's inflated prices, but this was the only place with comfortable chairs and a place to sit, for that matter.

Now that Valentine's Day was finally over, Japanese advertising went back to normal. Or, actually, now was officially the opening of the cherry blossom season. Not that it felt like any type of spring outside (you have seen our pictures from Japan), but the cherry blossoms (which we are, unfortunately, missing) are one of the most famous Japanese tourism attractions, and a big part of national pride (which we found out when, at every town we went to, people said, "Oh, if you were only here during cherry blossom it would be so beautiful!" Whatever.)

So Starbucks actually has a huge cherry blossom-themed display, much like during Christmas season, complete with gorgeous mugs, glasses, thermoses, and other price-inflated items. They also had a special cherry blossom frappacino (frozen drink), which Talia ordered since it looked so great. It comes with whipped cream (but Talia asked not to have any), and pink-colored chocolate sprinkles on top. it was DELICIOUS! They also had a few cherry blossom cakes, but Talia forgot to take pictures of them (full of cream, not her type of cake at all).

cherry blossom frappacino

Finally, it was late enough for us to head home. We mean, back to the hostel we were at when we first arrived in Tokyo (Khaosan Tokyo Samurai). It was so awesome - we were really happy to be going back and to see our friends from reception again. We loved it so much the second time, and, in retrospect, it's good that we came back for the end of the trip, too.

When we walked in, we were greeted with smiles and happiness from our friends who were happy to see us (and Talia's strawberry hat) again. Once again, we were greeted by an Israeli flag prominently displayed at the reception desk. Our room wasn't ready yet, since it was so early, so we went upstairs to the common room to update our blog for you and gather a bit of strength before heading out to Odaiba, an island in Tokyo that we missed the first time around.

View of Odaiba from the subway

We went straight to the Museum of Science and Emerging Technology, which we both wanted to go to (*cough* geeks *cough*). It was totally awesome! We are very happy that we had a chance to stay as long as we wanted this time and didn't have to leave early.

First of all, we had discount tickets. We mentioned when we just arrived in Japan that there was a map (the orange one) that has a bunch of coupons and discounts in it, and this was one of them. Again, not a huge discount (a Dollar), but they add up, which they did for us, when you go to a few places.

Anyway, the ticket you get is a printed electronic ticket with a bar code that you scan to get in and out of the exhibitions. Included in out ticket was also a free movie, if we were interested, and one of them looked cool to us, so we got the tickets for it for later.

The nifty ticket

The first exhibition hall we walked into was about emerging technology - new things, to be clear. :-) The moment we walked in, there was a young lady there giving a hands-on presentation about super conductors. Ordinarily, a presentation might have been boring, but she had PROPS. More importantly, there were already 3 Westerners sitting there, so she was explaining everything in both Japanese and English, which we really appreciated. Even the signs showing the laws that she was showing were in both Japanese and English!

Science experience - semiconductors

This was an awesome introduction to the museum as far as we were concerned. We continued to walk around this hall and there were all kinds of displays about how to create energy (e.g. by stepping on the ground at the subway!) and lots of displays where you click buttons to see how things work - it is a very hands-on museum.

One of the informational displays

We then saw that there was a huge area that was sealed off, which is where their star robot, Asimo, was going to come out a give a show - exactly at the same time that we were supposed to be in the movie theatre. So we decided to forego the movie so we can see the robot, because - hello! - it's a ROBOT.

And we're happy we did. The robot was SO cute, and spoke and danced and pointed and walked REALLY funny. There were a zillion kids there, all talking to the robot and having a great time - it was really fun.

When the robot left us, we continued on to a display explaining how the Internet works in very easy terms - it was actually really interesting. In theory, that is, since it was only in Japanese. But the display was very interesting and we could understand what they were doing.

Asimo the robot (who also plays soccer!)

Upward and onward we went to the last 2 exhibition halls, which were about earth. Rony loved these halls, and Talia less, but still enjoyed herself, don't worry. Here there was a lot of information that we knew from high school (even Talia who could have paid more attention in class...), and, yet again, interactive displays, such as a deep-sea submarine that you can get into and touch all the buttons (that's what the guide says). The guide also instructed us to give him our cameras so he could take pictures of us inside the submarine. That was cool. :-)

Our favorite display was, most definitely, the high-energy accelerator. Rony would like to point at that the largest one in the world is in France. Done. :-)

High energy accelerator

When we first came across this display, there were about 5 or 6 teenage girls around the machine, and the one who was making the machine work was rolling the ball so hard that she couldn't stop laughing because it was so difficult. After Rony made fun of them for being weak (to Talia, not to them), he decided to do it himself. Ha! It was really hard! You need to make the ball go as fast as you can for it to go around a circle on the screen, and it shows your "strength," which really makes you try to go faster.

At one point, Talia had to take over for Rony so he could rest, but it was too much for her, too, and he took over again. Eventually, after beating the game (we think? Who remembers), he collapsed on the floor for a few minutes before we continued through the rest of the exhibitions.

We ended our visit by ordering a hot dog (guess who ordered it) and a green tea and chocolate muffin (guess who ordered that!)

After literally a few hours at the museum, we headed back to the hostel - it was already late afternoon and we hadn't slept at all the night before, so our eyes were like ping pong balls on acid.

In the evening, one of the girls who works at the hostel, the one who gives the free origami lessons, invited us to join her for dinner at a place that serves eel. Of course we accepted. :-) Along the way, we made friends with a really cute Australian couple from our hostel and they ended up joining us as well.

The food was SO delicious, and ridiculously cheap - seriously. It cost about $6. Isn't that what a small (Tall?) coffee costs at Starbucks? :-)

And that was it for that day.

Pics from our last days in Tokyo:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=620147&id=906005363&l=28e8d0fc0b

Yokote, Japan - awesome snow festival, and a short recap

2011-02-18T17:31:00.000+02:00

The next morning, we got up, had "breakfast" at the hotel again (Rony didn't even bother going down this time, watched a really funny program on TV that teaches kids to speak English (by repeating the words "win" and "lose" 900 times), and then we checked out of our hotel.

We went to the train station nearby to put our luggage in lockers, since we were taking the night bus to Tokyo that night and didn't want to carry everything with us all day. We then walked around Morioka for a few hours before leaving for our 3-hour train ride to Yokote.

We fully intended on sight-seeing in Morioka, but it was snowing and really cold, and the truth is that even the things we wanted to see weren't worth seeing. So basically we walked into a lot of stores, bought some gifts for our family, and then went to the train station when it was time to catch the train to Yokote.

The moment we arrived in Yokote, we knew we were going to have fun: 2 of the station's employees were handing out amazake (which we told you about yesterday)! Totally awesome. And to make things better, there were a few cute snow sculptures right by the station and the staff kept taking pictures for everyone there! Of course, we were the only non-Japanese people there, but we've already gotten used to it.

Train station staff giving everyone amazake

Our expectations for Yokote weren't extremely high, considering it is a tiny town, but it turns out that tiny towns have the best fun! Our first stop was close to the train station, and everyone was (of course) excited to see us. More people offered us amazake, but we were still drinking the cup that we got from the train station staff (which, by the way, did not stop them from trying to give us more anyway).

We then walked in to a small building where they were selling all kinds of food, one of which was vegetarian gyoza (so yummy!), plus it was a great opportunity to warm up a bit. As we ate, we walked around the looked at the really beautiful pictures they had there - there was some kind of an exhibition about the town in that hall.

Gyoza

One guy gave us some juice to drink - we're not sure what it was, but it was delicious, and it had a carrot on the sticker - and Rony picked out a baked noodle-type ting (we have no idea what it's called), and when we wanted to pay, the seller said it was on the house! People just love giving us free stuff here! :-)

When we were done, we walked outside to see the little kamakuras, which are like little igloos. They generally have candles inside, and other warming devices, so they are warm when you walk in. Before we had a chance to see which way was up, the guy who gave us the free drinks told us to come with him, and he had us stand in front of a kamakura whose entrance was shaped as a heart, and told us to give him our camera so he can take a picture (this, of course, was all in sign language).

So we did, and he took a picture, which didn't turn out great, so he told us to go into the kamakura and the picture is so awesome, that people think it's Photoshopped! But it isn't. :-) There were a few other people there who saw us inside and took pictures of us, too (we're famous!), and a few little girls who kept walking up to us and saying, "Hello!" - they were really cute.

One of the kamakuras

When we were done, we started walking toward the main kamakura site. Once again, we passed the ladies with the amazake, who, once again, tried to give us more. We passed, and not 20 meters later, there was a huge table with sake and another sake-based liquor (that wasn't warm). They gave one to each of us (we each had a different one), and they couldn't stop laughing at our (Talia's) facial expressions because it was so strong. Also, they were drunk. :-)

We didn't know exactly where to go, but we just followed the crowd. Along the way, the town had set up a bunch of lights and special snow fixtures so we wouldn't, heaven forbid, get bored along the way, and some of them were amazing! One of them looked like a menorah, and Talia took a picture, but she accidentally deleted it, so oops.

Some of the stuff along the way

We arrived at the main station, and at first it was similar to the Sapporo festival since there were a bunch of snow sculptures, among them Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. As we walked on, we saw a huge row of kamakuras with people inside them and their shoes OFF! We took pictures, just like everyone else, of the people inside the kamakuras. They were all warming up amazake (and offering it to us, of course!) and also rice patties, which tasted to us a lot like the pita bread that you make out of flour and water at a camp fire.

Talia with Donald Duck

The rice patty

Along the way, of course, we were handing numerous packs of tissue paper, and some of them (from the local police) actually had hand warmers on them, too! And another group was handing out packets that had hand warmers and a notepad! Totally awesome.

At one kamakura, there were 4 14-year-old girls, who were adorable, and they invited us in. At this point we couldn't say no, especially since they were trying so hard to speak English for us. Talia wasn't thrilled at the prospect of removing her shoes at sub-zero degree weather, but the truth is that it was really warm inside because of the fire in the middle.

Us and the cute 14-year-olds, who kept us well-fed

We sat with the girls for around 15 minutes, during which time they kept feeding us (apparently they learn to feed the foreigners at a very young age), and had to move on since our time was limited. If we were staying in Morioka for the night, we would have taken the last train back, but we had to catch the 11 pm train to Tokyo, so we were on a tight deadline.
But we had time to see the food market that was around the corner and Talia bought a banana covered in chocolate on a stick which was delicious.

Bananas on stick, some covered with chocolate, some with other stuff we didn't try

All in all, the evening was awesome. We ate too much, drank too much (liquids in general, we didn't get drunk or anything), and had an awesome time, ooohing and aaahing all along the evening. We were truly sad to leave Yokote and its festival, especially since there were a few more stations that we hadn't had a chance to see.

One of the last thing we saw in the festival: Kamakura made of plastic bottles!

When we got back to Morioka, we had about half an hour before our bus to Tokyo. Why a bus? Because our JR passes had expired the day before and we had to pay for this ride, and the night bus was the cheapest (when you factor in 1) having the extra day since you travel at night and 2) not having to pay for a hostel for that night).

In theory, the night bus is great: The chairs are individual, you can lean back really far, and you can even prop up your legs. Every window is covered, including the passage to the driver, so it's almost pitch black in there. As a bonus, each chair has an individual pod-like top that you can pull over your head (not on it, just over) that makes it dark for you, but totally breathable.

The cool seats in the bus

So where's the problem? The night bus to Tokyo is not direct. It makes about 8-10 stops along the way, geographically located exactly 3 minutes after each time Talia fell asleep (which is more than Rony was able to do). Each time we came up to a stop, the driver would announce it on the loud speaker, and people would get off, and others would get on. So while it was fairly comfortable, definitely more comfortable than a flight is, we didin't really get any sleep at all.

About the JR pass: We've mentioned it a few times. The pass is a train pass that you can purchase outside of Japan and is only available for non-Japanese tourists. You can purchase it in 7-day, 14-day, and 21-day denominations, and it allows you to travel an unlimited amount of times and distance within the given time period.

We purchased the 21-day pass and only started using it when we left Tokyo for Kyoto, and, like we just mentioned, it expired the day before we had to go back to Tokyo. The pass cost us 57,700 yen (about $700) each. Expensive you say? Not when you calculate how much the train would have cost us.

We calculated the trains we took, and the grand total is, wait for it.....155,000 yen which is about $1860!

Pics from this festival (in addition to the ones from the last post) you can see in this link

Morioka and Kakunodate, Japan - Another snow festival

2011-02-17T17:13:00.001+02:00

After Hakodate, we left the island of Hokkaido and went back to the main island to Morioka. Before we go, though, we would like to share this marvelous song with you. It is officially our favorite:

We weren't really planning on seeing anything in Morioka itself, but it was a good base for a few snow festivals in tiny towns nearby.

We got into town in the afternoon, settled in to our hotel, and left for Shizukuishi for a snow festival. When we arrived in Shuzukuishi, we went to the tourist information center at the train station (if you can call a person who doesn't know a single word of English "information"), and were informed that there was no public transportation to the festival, which is stupid, especially since this festival is heavily promoted in Morioka and surrounding areas.

After literally 10 minutes that it took us to understand what the guy was signing (after the blood drained out of his face upon seeing us arrive), we understood that we could only arrive in a taxi, and that it would cost us about 2700 Yen in each direction - $32 - so we decided to forego it, even though it totally pissed us off, since we were really looking forward to it.

A couple days later, by the way, when we were at tourist information in Morioka to ask about a different town, Rony casually remarked that it's a shame there was no public transportation to an event that was so heavily publicized, to which the tourist information lady (who spoke great English) replied, "If you would have come to us when you got into town, we would have told you that there was transportation from here." Conclusion: Between all the coupons and free gifts, and important festival information, be sure to stop at every single tourist information center you come across.

We went back to Morioka, sulking, and asked at reception where we should have dinner. They referred us to the main road, which was close to us, and we ate at Hot Ja Ja, one of the restaurants they recommended, and OMIGOODNESS it was delicious!!!

First of all, you know you're in an awesome restaurant when you are given directions about how to prepare and eat your food:

Our dinner's instruction manual :-)

Basically, there was only one dish there, an udon (noodle)-based dish, this time not based in a soup, which it usually is. You receive the noodles with some leek and cucumbers and a splotch of miso and are supposed to mix it up. Then you add seasoning of your choice and mix it again. When you are just about done eating, you break an egg in your plate and call for the wait staff.

They then take away your plates and bring them back with egg drop soup - yummy!!! We were REALLY full at this point, but we ate some of it anyway since it was so delicious. All in all, if there was a battle between us and the food, the food won. We just couldn't finish it all.

It was one of our favorite meals in Japan.

We went back to the hotel, updated the blog for your guys, and turned on the TV, where we were surprised to discover TV in ENGLISH! We watched like 3 or 4 episodes of Law and Order, which is either 3 or 4 more than Talia had ever watched, but it was so exciting! We could understand what was on TV! And we went to sleep happy. The following day, by the way, these English stations weren't working anymore, so it was just the one night, but what a glorious night it was!

We had free "breakfast" at the hotel, if you can call it that, and went over to the train station to catch a train to Kakunodate. We went to tourist information to get a map (usually the larger cities have maps of the smaller towns in the area), and to ask them if there's something special to see. It was then that we were told about the transportation to the festival that we missed the night before (it was the last evening).

Kakunodate is a cute town that has a main street that is full of old samurai houses, which is the main attraction of the town. We arrived in town and the first thing we saw was that the streets were lined with snow "sculptures," though in this case they were all street lamps. It was so awesome!

After a slight detour, where Talia decided to fulfill yet another childhood event that she missed, where she slid down a snow slide, we arrived at the samurai street. The street itself is beautiful, and we were told that it is lined with cherry trees that are just beautiful in the spring. Marvelous, we were told that every place we went, but we don't care, we loved everything we saw anyway.

As we walked up the street with our trusty map, we realized 2 things:

1) Everything was written only in Japanese
2) Every house we were passing was closed.

Total bummer.

As we made our way up the street, Talia fulfilled yet another long-time dream of hers: Making a snow angel! Well, technically the dream remained partially unfulfilled, seeing as the snow was so deep that once she dove backwards into the snow (weeeeeee!!!!!) she couldn't move to make the snow angel.

A dead snow angel

She also couldn't get up - she was stuck. Rony, forever the loving and helpful boyfriend, made sure her attempt to get up was photographed for your viewing pleasure, while laughing in the background - but that you can't see.

We slept in separate rooms that night.

Not really.

We finally reached a samurai house that was open! But we were asked not to enter yet since there were so many people inside already. So as we waited in the minus-bazillion degree weather, we saw an older man shoveling and moving snow around. Rony decided to help him out, and started shoveling it for him so he could rest! The man was shocked. He was really funny, too - when he had enough snow on the wheelbarrow, he would run up the little snow hill to dump it!

Such a gentleman!

We were then told we could go in (who knew we had to work for entry?). We removed our shoes, which made Talia think twice about entering, and the lady tried to explain something to us. We aren't sure what she was saying, but suddenly we heard a voice, by another (Japanese) tourist, saying that she speaks English and she can translate.

We were all lead into a small room and invited to sit on the (padded) floor. There were 2 guides there, and one was roasting chestnuts (on an open fire...)The people who were already in the room moved back to let us sit in front of the fire - they were already warm, we were still freezing from outside.

The guides were talking about the history of the house and the samurai era, and we were very lucky that the Japanese English speaker was there, because she translated just about everything that he said, so it was even more interesting than it would have been. When the chestnuts were done roasting, they passed them around for us to eat.

Mmmm... chestnuts!

They also explained about how the samurai wives would dry freeze and smoke many vegetables so that they would have food for the winter, and everything was pickled, since it was the best way to preserve them - and then we were given some pickled vegetables, too, which was also delicious.

As they were wrapping up (well, the one guy was wrapping up, the other guy kept falling asleep and making funny faces,) they pulled out a couple of posters to let us know about a local festival that they were having that day. It was a 2-day festival and today was the second day, and we were surprised that tourist information didn't tell us about it. We weren't sure yet if we were going to stay, because we had a lot more to see and we were tired, so we decided to play it by ear.

We had a really great lunch, which in all honesty could have fed 4 hungry, large people, and started walking back toward the train station. Since we had about 40 minutes before our train, we made a stop at a cute store that we hoped to find presents for our families at, and ended up missing our train.

Once we saw what the time was, and when the next train was, we decided to stay. After all, it was already 16:00, and the festival started at 18:00, so we stopped at the tourist information center, just to make sure it was worth staying for, and then, after resting a bit at the center (which was really heated, so it was really nice), we started our walk back to the samuari area, which is where the main part of the festival was going to happen.

On the way, we stopped at a really cute bakery and bought some really delicious small cakes. They were SO yum!! At this point, the sun was already setting so the snow lanterns now had candles in them that were already lit, so the whole town looked different. We were already happy that we stayed, and we hadn't even reached the festival site yet!

We still had about half an hour left, so we stepped into another store and saw the funniest and oddest things there, such as this:

Mobile ashtray (it's called "the ground" everywhere else)

Fake security system stickers - BTW check out the scared face in the drawing!

We finally arrived at the main site and there was a big bonfire going on - it was like Lag Ba'omer - but not! We didn't know what to expect, but soon enough we saw the festival begin. Basically, they had these woven basket-type things that are tied to a rope, and people are supposed to light them on fire (for real) and then swing them around their bodies (for real). We thought that these were professionals that were doing this (we saw the pictures on the posters), but then someone walked up to us and gave one to Rony and told him to do it. Of course, we were the only tourists, again, so we did receive a lot of attention.
Not one to be frightened by fire, or anything for that matter, Rony accepted the challenge. While most people were given a try without any fire, they lit Rony's on fire right away, though luckily the fire was small. So small, that they stopped him and lit it again. And this time, Rony got tons of oohs and ahhs and stuff in Japanese that we couldn't understand (sugoii!) There were TV crews there and everything! Rony may have made his Japanese TV debut, we don't know. But here's our recording of the event:

When Rony was done and turned around to come back, everyone started clapping - around 25-30 people. It was really cool. They then offered Talia a chance, but she ran away and ducked beneath the table in fear. Sorta. Actually, we DO know the word for scary in Japanese - kowai - so she just kept saying that until they realized it wasn't going to happen.

It was then that people started offering us free soup and sports drinks and sake and beer - it was hilarious! Everywhere we go here, people offer us free food and drinks. There was also another drink, a rice-based liquor, that we were given, and it was nice.

About half an hour later, after we continued to marvel at the people playing with fire, including some weirdos (a lady who was still holding on to her completely-flammable purse) and fearless parents (who held their little children with one arm and threw fire around themselves with the other,) we started walking to some of the other stations to see if there would be something different there.

We arrived at the place where Talia slid earlier, and they also had a bonfire going on, though a smaller one, and the fire thingy, too. Rony decided to have another go, and he says the second tim isn't as scary as the first. Just so y'all know.

Of course, we were the only foreigners there, too, so we again attracted much attention, especially when Rony did the fire thing again. And again, we were offered soup and sake, and they just wouldn't take no for an answer, so after more soup and more shots of sake with a few funny drunk Japanese men, we headed back to the train station to go back to the hotel and get some sleep.

All in all, this was an awesome day, especially since it was completely unexpected.
But it's not over! Another snow festival is coming soon: Kamakura Snow Festival in Yokote.
Stay tuned!

Pics from Morioka and Kakunodate

Hakodate, Japan - full of surprises

2011-02-16T11:11:00.000+02:00

Our last morning in Sapporo couldn't have started more abysmally: As it turned out, the alarm clock in the room was set for 5:07 am. Of course, this woke us up, following a small heart attack since we had no idea what it was at first, and then couldn't fall asleep any more.

That morning, however, we were leaving Sapporo for Hakodate anyway, which is just a bit south of Sapporo, but a 3-hour train ride since it's a slow train that has to go stop in every little town on the way. Since we have been in Japan during off season, and very often we've been the only Western tourists where we are, we've had a very easy time getting tickets for the trains.

However, since Sapporo is such a hot destination, due to the famous snow festival, by the time we got to the ticket counter, there were no more seats available on the train, the next train had non-reserved seats only (read: Stand up for 3 hours), but there was room on the third. So, we got a very late start that day, having to wait at the train station for over 2.5 hours just to begin our 3-hour train ride.

While waiting at the Sapporo train station, we had this awesome cheese cake at Starbucks Coffee. It was so good!!

Needless to say, we arrived in Hakodate late enough that there wasn't really much for us to do that day anymore. Because of the winter and the snow, everything has been closing around 4:30 or so, so we just rested, which was important since we were exhausted from being awakened at 5:07.

Our hotel in Hakodate was awesome. They have a lot of free stuff: Free laundry (and soap), free hot springs (transportation included), and they have a free breakfast in the morning, which isn't very popular in Japan (and definitely not Western-style - usually this is just a regular meal with rice and noodles and meat), but they also have a really cool extra: From 21:30 to 23:00 (that's 9:30-11 pm for you non-military-time types), they serve free ramen!

For you Americans, ramen is not the 25-cent baggie thingies that college students live off of, it is a really wonderful noodle-soup-type dish that you are supposed to make noise sipping. Rony had no problem easing in to this tradition and happily slurped his soup (it's the right thing to do here, after all), but Talia couldn't do it. Physically. She tried, but it wouldn't happen. Perhaps it's a psychological barrier - she will get it checked out when she's back home.

Anyway, we went downstairs for this dinner and went to bed.

The following morning, we got an early start and set out to see one of the main attractions in Hakodate - the Goryokaku tower and star-shaped fort. We started out in the tower and went to the top, along with many others. The view is spectacular. Even the most gorgeous pictures we took cannot begin to explain how beautiful it all was. Since the whole country, practically, is covered in snow, and especially the north, the whiteness of everything was just awe-inspiring. Of course, Talia isn't used to these amounts of snow (or any, for that matter), so she just kept ooohing and aahing about everything.

The fort as seen from the tower. See the small dots in the snow? Those are people!

What's special about the tower is that you can see the entire star-shaped fort below. Usually it's surrounded by water, but in our case it was snow. Still, it was beautiful.

When we went back down to the first floor, we were surprised to see a long line at a gelato (ice cream) stand. We approached to see what the fuss was about and OMIGOODNESS you have never seen such beautiful colors - and odd ice cream choices. Of course, we had to have some, even if it was -4 C (25 F) degrees outside. It was delicious! We got a few different flavors so we could taste as many as possible.

Some of the flavors they had: black sesame seeds, purple sweet potatoes, pumpkin and milk

Rony tasting the purple sweet potatoes: "OMG! It's good!"

After our delicious ice cream, we went outside to walk around the fort. The city is beautiful, as is the fort. As we walked around and saw different parts of the fort, including the magistrate building, which was cool, but apparently just a copy built a couple of years ago and finally opened last year, we suddenly heard really weird chanting.

The magistrate office rebuilt and reopened last July

At this point, we were on top of a hill looking over a large part of the fort, so we started running toward the noise to see what the noise was. And OMIGOODNESS was that run worth it! Apparently there was a group of 10 or 12 young guys, barely passed their teenage years, who were NAKED but for a mawashi (like the sumo diapers). As a reminder, it was -4 (25) degrees outside!!

What? How? Who are they?!?

So we had to run to take as many pictures as possible, because - let's face it - who would believe us without the pics? Rony ran after them (Talia walked slower because she's not used to walking on ice), and took as many pics as possible of this weird phenomenon. A few of the guys were carrying a gurney with what appeared to be a large ice statue of some sort that would couldn't figure out yet.

What the hell is that?!?!?

At first, we thought they were going to interrupt the ceremony that was going on below, including a marching band (that played a lot better than Talia's high school's marching band, no offense), but then we saw that, in fact, they were part of the ceremony!

The guys continued with their chanting (and everyone present continued snapping 100 photos per minute of the spectacle), and place the ice sculpture - which turned out to be the head of a dragon - on top of the body. They continued to chant, and suddenly people started throwing buckets of water at them! And they were still naked! And it was still snowing outside and freezing and OMIGOODNESS Talia almost froze to death just watching them.

But we couldn't stop laughing and watching in awe. Of course, we had no clue what was going on, and the only people who spoke English were other tourists who, also, had no idea what was going on. Luckily, we received somewhat of an explanation while writing this blog post. Apparently, these guys volunteer for this ceremony and it is supposed to show that they have guts, or something along those lines. We tried to find an explanation online, but couldn't. Oh, well. It was hilarious anyway, and we had fun.

As we were leaving, we heard a lot of noise (again) coming from the street. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a few men on top of a big van, not unlike the Chabbad van, but these guys weren't dancing in the middle of the street, but trying to bring upon social change. We are clearly fluent in Japanese. Actually, there was a guy there handing out fliers and (of course) tissue paper (our 10th packs, more or less, since we've arrived in Japan), and we were able to make out what it was about because of their awesome use of cartoon characters.

Vote for us!

The first cartoon shows a guy stamping a time card at 18:00 when it's 21:00, under it you can see a injured guy asking for sick leave and below a mother asking to go take her children earlier, but the boss says no. At least that's our interpretation :)

The next stop was Suehiro-cho, which is an area of old waterfront warehouses that were turned into mini shopping malls where they sold all kinds of random stuff, from souvenirs and toys to chocolates and light fixtures - in short, pichifkes ("bric-a-brac" in English... and French). They also had the same ice scream shop as we had eaten in the tower! But enough was enough. :-)

Old warehouse turned to shopping mall

Nearby was the Russian Orthodox Church, which is one of the famous landmarks in Hakodate. They require that you remove your shoes when entering, which is funny since it's a Christian religious institution, but, we guess, when in Japan...

Russian Orthodox Church

The last stop was the view from Mount Hakodate. When we arrived at the train station the day before, we went through the tourist information office to see if there was anything we didn't know about that was worth going to see. They gave us a map, of course, and then a coupon for the ropeway up to the mountain for the view, which was a $1.20 discount, more or less.

A note about tourist information in Japan - always go, even if you know what you are going to do in the town/city. They often have information that you can't find online, like for random festivals, and we have gotten many coupons and presents from several of them! You can't beat free stuff. :-)

There is a store with drinks and food at the top and the bottom of the mountain, in case you wanted to know. There's also a small movie theater at the top where every 15 minutes they show the history of Hakodate, and a great indoor and outdoor lookout. The view from the mountain is spectacular, of course, so this was a fun part of the visit.

Hakodate from Mt. Hakodate view point

The next day, we crossed back to the main island to Morioka and a few other snow festivals, but that's for the next post. :-)

Pics from Hakodate:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=618393&id=906005363&l=ebd7786831

Sapporo snow festival

2011-02-13T13:08:00.000+02:00

So after a night in Aomori, we had a taste of what the cold and snow would be like in Sapporo, our next big stop. (Talia was very excited.) (Not so much.)

We left Aomori early in the morning, because it takes 6 hours (!!!) to reach Sapporo by train. Aomori is the northern-most city reached by the Shinkansen (the fast train), so from now on, we could only travel by regular trains.

The position of the train in the tunnel is displayed every few minutes in the car

The train from Honshu to Hokkaido passed through a long tunnel (which is actually crossing the sea), and after a short transfer in Hakodate, we finally arrived in Sapporo around 16:00.

Sapporo is the biggest city north of Tokyo and it looked very lively when we arrived: People rushing everywhere, subway lines, and long walks to get out of the station.

One of the great idea we saw in Sapporo subway: reserved cars for women, children and disabled during morning rush hour

You know you're in a big city when you see that kind of stuff :)

Our hotel was a luxurious one: Mercure Hotel in downtown Sapporo, a 5-minute walk from the Snow Festival main event are and near the busy shopping street.

We received a cup of hot chocolate as a welcome present, and we had TV with BBC! Why are we so excited? Because we haven't had foreign channels for a long time, probably since Tokyo.

All was well, but one thing: they didn't leave any shower soap or shampoo in the bathroom!

Well, it's good that we're backpackers and we have everything we need on us. Also, we probably could have asked at the reception desk, but we kept forgetting.
We didn't spend much time at the hotel and went directly to the Snow Festival main street - Odori - to admire the beautiful sculptures.

There were small sculptures:

And big ones:

And there was an international contest going on when we were there. They had less than 24 hours to finish their sculpture:

And a snowboard show:

And lots of food stalls everywhere. One thing is sure in Japan: You can not be hungry for very long. Or need the toilet for very long. Which is awesome if you are a girl.

Anyway, even at -5 degrees, we enjoyed being there.

That's how Japanese girls are dressed when it's -5 Celsius degrees. Insane!

The next day, we walked around the other festival events and one of them was just around the corner from our hotel: Susukino site.

Susukino site

Even if it was smaller, it was a good surprise too:

Talia tries to eat a frozen crab!

Ice Transformer!

And we could go stand on the sculptures!

Rony and Talia in their crystal palace

But it was mainly for kids:

Vroum! Vroum!

Tchu! Tchu!

We then went to warm up and have dinner in the huge underground mall that connects 3 subway stations: Susukino, Odori and JR Sapporo station.

And have some Baskin Robbins ice-cream:

And Talia bought herself a few (more) shirts. She really likes the fashion here :)
Maybe she can import it to Israel and create a start up :) This is only our 5th idea for a start up since we started our trip. :-)

On the third day, we went a bit further in Sapporo, to another Festival site and had some fun sliding on our butts:

Even if this place was mainly for kids, we had fun too.

Talia even met a family from Houston!

Then we went to do some more shopping. After all, we're leaving Japan soon. If we could bring back everything we like here, we would probably need a cargo. But since we are limited in weight (by the airplane companies and by our backs too) we need to make a selection.

In one of the mall we stroll, we saw that and of course we couldn't miss it :)

Anyway, Sapporo was fun and we're happy we came to the Snow Festival. It's the last big thing we planned to do here in Japan. But don't worry, we still have a few things to see here, mainly other snow festivals around Morioka, on the way back to Tokyo.

But that's for another post ;)

Pics from Sapporo and the snow festival:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=616687&id=906005363&l=e79d7189a8