kurobe alpen route bus tour

snow capped mountains with a hazy moon in a grey sky

Up bright and early -around 4:30am – we arrived at Shinjuku, ready for our bus to depart at 7am. We were off on a two-day bus tour to discover Kurobe Tateyama Alpine Route.

a doctor's office in a museum dedicated to the showa era
traditional shop
mitarashi dango held up
rice cake on a stick

First up, we stopped at Hida Takayama where we explored a museum dedicated to the Showa-era and sampled mitarashi-dango whilst basking in the traditional town streets. It was nice to see the sakura still blooming in the area – getting to see sakura is always a plus for me.

thatched roofed houses of Shirakawa-go
inside a house in the rafters in shirakawa-go
black sesame seed ice cream in a cone being held up
vanilla ice cream in a cone being held up
2 sticks of dango in a chestnut-miso sauce

Then we were on our way to Shirakawa-go to see the thatched houses. The village is open for ...

my tokyo hotel quarantine experience – feb 2022

I’ve been in the UK for the past couple of months, so when it was time to return to Tokyo, I knew I’d have to do a 6 day hotel quarantine.

I was at Villa Fontaine Haneda which is a brand new hotel and is right at the airport. It was a really lovely hotel but I had no view really and the internet was terrible as well as the TV. One night I was just absentmindedly looking out of the window, enjoying the view of the other side of the hotel when I noticed a couple having sex up ...

october means pumpkins in tokyo in autumn

Happy October everyone! I don’t think October means pumpkins for most of the residents of Tokyo, but maybe some lost souls out there.

We went to Yumenoshima Tropical Greenhouse Dome, which we have been to before and you can find the post here. Looking back at that post, I’ve taken pretty much the exact same pictures, so maybe just read this one.

It wasn’t empty like last time and you had to reserve a time slot. The photographers were out in FULL force – we saw children being paraded around dressed as pumpkins, witches and Snow White. That’s ...

natsume soseki memorial museum tokyo, waseda, tokyo

  • Soseki street sign
  • Soseki museum sign

I love Natsume Soseki and there is a museum dedicated to him in Waseda, Natsume Soseki Memorial Museum, Tokyo. It’s built on the site where he used to live and it is a beautiful building inside.

Soseki museum entrance
  • Soseki cut out
  • Soseki bust
  • Soseki information plaque
  • Soseki museum layout
  • Soseki picture
  • Soseki walking map

Here’s a link to the walking map.

Soseki cafe with two coffees

There is also a cafe inside and I did like the coffee. We didn’t get any of the sweets because they were sold out of the 空也もなか but I don’t think we missed much.

veggie cafe, taco rice

For lunch we went to Cafe VG which is a veggie place and was lovely.

I was glad to visit the Soseki ...

a day in okutama

Happy belated Mountain Day! To celebrate, we went to Okutama・奥多摩 , Tokyo Prefecture. It took a bit over 2 hours to get there from over the other side of Tokyo, so we were up at 5:45 on a Saturday morning. We managed to get seats on the trains, which was my number one concern of the day and the trains are cool, so not a bad place to be in the middle of Japanese summer. When we arrived, they were gearing up for the festival, with stalls lining the streets but they weren’t open whilst we were there.

This month ...