Family Visits

Summer has come and gone and I've left my lonely readers without a post for almost two months! I sincerely apologize for that (and thanks Emily for the reminder!) Now I'm back into the swing of things (including work which will be another post) and am relaxing on our couch on this long awaited weekend.

After returning from Korea, I had one day to get our house sparkling and ready for our visitors. Mike's parents and Liz came for two weeks, I went home to the states for a week, then Molly and Benny came for week, and lastly Steve and Chrisitin came for two weeks! (Side note, I have NO pictures of Steve and Christin from their trip but and wanted to give shout-out to them and that I love you guys!) That pretty much sums up my summer which is why there has been a lack in the blogging department. I simply haven't had the time! Here are some highlights of my summer:

We took the Quinns to Yokohama where Mr. Quinn could take a peek at where he used to live as a child.

I've blogged about Yokohama in a previous post which you can see here so I won't go into detail of all that there is to see and do. It was a full day to say the least with some cozy arrangements in jam-packed trains so we were all tuckered out by the end of that day.

Another highlight of my summer was Mt. Takao...x 3. That's right, I went to Mt. Takao three times but I seriously am not complaining. Mt. Takao is beautiful and is about 30 minutes from where we live, plus I can bring Huey so we all have a good time. It is a sacred mountain where many Japanese go to pray to the Shinto-Buddhist mountain gods. I just go to take pictures and eat cherry blossom ice cream but either way, we all have a good time.

And then there's the Sake factory out in Ome. I've been there 3 times as well, but only twice this summer. In any case, I still haven't developed a taste for sake and I don't think I ever will. I basically love everything about the sake factory except for the sake. It's beautiful and in the mountains which gives you a different perspective than the standard concrete city and traffic that we're used to.

A new experience for me was to go to the Shirato waterfalls near Mt. Fuji. The waterfalls were beautiful but my hair was a hot mess with all the humidity and mist coming from the water. While there, I made sure to take some photos, buy dried mangos from a Japanese stand and eat green tea ice cream. Maybe the title of my post should be "Ice Cream' since I've mentioned it one too many times already. Anyway, we also stopped for lunch at the Fuji View Hotel. They had a really nice buffet set up for us and I couldn't help but snap a few photos of the food descriptions next some of the items. While waiting in the lobby, I came across some old journals from the 1960's and read a couple entries from some American visitors. It was really interesting.

Also on our list of things to do was Tama Hills x2. The first time to Tama Hills was actually a longer stay than we had planned because the power on Yokota went out due to a heavy downpour of rain that killed the generators. So we extended our trip and got to stay in the commanders cabin...which came with a private jacuzzi and personal golf cart! Huey came along and loved the log cabin and happily trotted his way around the house. He keeps asking me when we'll go back!

And then there's Tokyo, a city that you couldn't possibly see in just one day so we made sure that each set of visitors got to go to Tokyo at least two days. This was my favorite part of the summer as I was able to see and do so many things in the city that I'd never even known about. Asakusa was my absolute favorite part as there is so much history nestled in between the tall buildings that surround its location.

Another highlight of our summer was Kyoto. We only went for two days but it really was beautiful! Molly, Benny, Mike and I really enjoyed our time there and took some awesome pictures. The only downside was how dang hot it was which made us not want to be outside for too long. We saw the golden temple, the inari tori gates and a Japanese rock garden.

And just for fun, I wanted to add a few family shots when we were out and about, enjoying company, eating good food and having a good time. It was SO awesome to have family here and I'm so happy that we were able to show around this amazing country that we live in!

Huey was very sad to see our family leave.

It was a great summer and I'm sad that it's already over. Thank you family for making it so special!