Matt Family, Food, Japanese, Travel

A HOT SPRINGS JAPANESE BATH

Every time we go visit Aya’s parents, we always do an overnight trip to the hot springs. This is a very popular activity in Japan. What are the hot springs? Well, the Japanese love their baths, and they love fancy food, and scenic views. A hot springs hotel is a place where you can take a bath, eat a fancy meal, and take in a scenic view while you’re at it too. These places pipe in the natural hot springs water (they have some sort of medicinal effect) for you to soak in a big public bath… nude… with strangers. When this was explained to me on my first trip to Japan, I started to worry what I got myself into.

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Matt Fall, Family, Halloween, Holidays, Japanese, Travel

HALLOWEEN PARADE!

Halloween is a big deal in my family. It just is. And with us being away on Halloween, I felt the need to find some sort of Halloween activity to get Ellie involved in. Even if it was Japan, there had to be something we could take her to. And while we were out one day at the local mall, I found just the thing. A Halloween Parade!

We had no idea what to expect with it being in Japan, but it would be another excuse to get Ellie in her costume. But what would a Japanese Halloween Parade be like?

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Matt Family, Halloween, Japanese, Travel

HALLOWEEN AT TOKYO DISNEYLAND: PART TWO

When we planned our day at Tokyo Disneyland, I tried to contain my own excitement. Disneyland at Halloween! It couldn’t get any better than that! I had no idea how Ellie would do though. She might love it, or it might just be too much for her. I figured we’d take things slow and do a lot of looking, walking around, and not too many of the rides. But when Ellie woke up cranky on Disney day, I really had no idea what to expect.

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Matt Family, Halloween, Japanese, Travel

HALLOWEEN AT TOKYO DISNEYLAND: PART ONE

Do you like Disneyland? Do you like Halloween? Well imagine Disneyland with giant Mickey Mouse shaped jack-o-lanterns, dancing skeletons, mummies and witches, haunted houses and bats! Welcome to Spookyville people! That’s what you get when you go to Disneyland in October! (If you’re one of those hard crusty people who hate Disneyland and anything magical or wonderful, I’m sorry, maybe you should skip this post) We realized that Ellie was probably a little too young to enjoy the full effects of Disneyland. But when we are staying less than an hour away, how could we not go for one day to find out for ourselves! And with it being Halloween, we were going to take Ellie dressed in her costume as Little Red Riding Hood.

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Matt Family, Japanese, Travel

OUT AND ABOUT: THE GHIBLI MUSEUM

We’vemainly been kicking it close to home the past few days as to not push Ellie’s boundaries (or our’s) too much with all the new surroundings.  New house, new room, new crib, new food, new people, a whole lot more Japanese language, etc.  It’s actually been really nice taking things a little slower this trip and spending a lot more time at Aya’s folk’s house during the day.  But after a few days, we were all ready to go out for our first major outing.  Our destination was going to be the Ghibli Museum about an hour away.

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