The Tokyo Tower is one of the must visit sites while touring Tokyo. We’ve been able to visit it twice, once at night and once during the day. I prefer the night version, while it does make taking pictures a bit more trickier, it provides a much more amazing view of the city when it’s all lighted up. It’s approximately 1092 feet high and apparently taller than the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The Tokyo [Read more…]
Sapporo Snow Festival
Each February there is an amazing Snow festival held in Sapporo, Japan. This past February Mr. B and Boo were lucky enough to get to go with the Cummings 6th graders for a field trip. This was a wonderful opportunity as it’s otherwise pretty expensive and involves a 6 hour ferry ride. They stayed with host families while there. The snow and ice sculptures are HUGE and there were many opportunities [Read more…]
Towada Horse Park
The Towada Horse Park is a great place to spend the day with the kids, there is also a little shop that sells our favorite treat, soft serve vanilla ice cream! There are horses the kids can pet/feed, horses to ride (for 1000 yen, about $10, so we don’t do that part) and several play grounds. There is also a museum but we haven’t been inside it as there’s been so much to keep us occupied outside. [Read more…]
Waterfall near Garlic Festival
There is this really neat waterfall near where the Garlic festival takes place. It’s neat because it’s actually small streams of water pouring down this huge rock. The pictures of the waterfall alone are deceptive because they lead you to believe it’s small, but you can see the true size in the picture with us and the waterfall. The other great thing is that there is a nice park area (no playground) [Read more…]
Oirase Gorge Lake Towada in the Winter
Here are pictures of Oirase Gorge in the Winter. Notice all the the waterfalls are frozen solid, there was some free flowing water in the streams but not much. Also notice how high the snow walls are from being plowed. And just a bit of warning, the rest stop at the top (Lake Towada) does not have toilet paper, you have to supply your own. Also as with most rest stops in Japan there are no paper [Read more…]
Oirase Gorge Lake Towada in the Fall
Oirase Gorge is a beautiful scenic ride or hike up to Lake Towada, we have visited it in the fall and the winter. Today’s pictures are from the fall visit. It’s an almost 9 mile hike from top to bottom. Boo has hiked this several times for field trips with the school, Mr. B went on the last one and hiked it as well, we’ve only driven it as a family. There are places where you can stop and park [Read more…]
Mt. Osorezan
Mt. Osorezan means ‘Fear Mountain‘ and is considered the Entrance/Gateway to Hell, or where the dead pause on the way to the underworld, something that I was not aware of at the time of our visit. It is located in the Shimokita peninsula and is about 2 hours from Misawa. It is a volcano which cause the area to smell like sulfur and there are areas where steam comes out of the water. The pamphlet [Read more…]
Misawa City Indoor Swimming Pool
Let me preface this story by saying that Wed I decided to do something crazy and go run 2 miles with Mr. B…it about killed me but I did it. When I woke up Thurs morn (yesterday) I was SOOO sore, but I still decided to run another 2 miles with Mr. B. Needless to say I could hardly walk and was hobbling around all day using the kids for support, LOL! So we picked an activity for today that would [Read more…]
Swan Park
On the way to Shimoda mall there is a Swan Park that you pass, it has a great little playground complete with the plastic little tikes dinosaurs, a nice grassy area with ponds, a stair slide and a large lookout tower. It’s a nice place to visit for an outing. There are swans in a large pond on one side but with all the Bird Flu issues we just stick to the playground part away from the swans.
[Read more…]Shirohama Swimming Beach
Just past the Ashigezaki View Point from my last post is the Shirohama Swimming Beach. The reason that swimming beaches are so important here in Japan is due to the dangerous rip tide currents. It’s unsafe to just go swimming in the ocean like you’d do at most beaches, you need to go to a swimming beach where they have large concrete breakers in the water. We’ve gone here a few times, not to [Read more…]