Creatures of Habit

Posted on by Caroline
We made it into Tokyo by about 2:30 PM yesterday, which left us with less than 24 hours to enjoy being in Japan. This interlude made me realize how much we’ve become creatures of habit. We stayed in our usual Ueno hotel—nothing fancy, but large enough to easily accommodate all four of us. We ate at our favorite kaiten sushi restaurant around the corner from the hotel. The waiter there recognizes us now and loves to talk to Tim about fishing and Guam and recommend all his favorite delicacies. We ate breakfast at our favorite bakery - a Japanese interpretation of a French bakery. We ordered our usual Panda anpan - shaped to honor the pandas at the nearby Ueno...Read More

Launching…

Posted on by Caroline
Out the window, the clouds are a blinding, shapeless white. Somewhere below them the Pacific is serenely drifting past. Or maybe not so serenely - it’s been a season of more typhoons than usual, and somewhere to the north and east of us, another tropical storm is barreling toward Hawaii. Duke is sitting next to me, absorbed in videos about soccer and not the clouds out the window. A few rows ahead of us, Tim and Amelia are reading. We’re on the first leg of four weeks of travel. By the time we’re done we’ll have covered five countries, gone to various camps, finished our back-to-school shopping, visited family in at least three different cities, and watched an eclipse. I’m...Read More

Heading back – by way of Tokyo

Posted on by Caroline
Well, I wrote a whole blog post, but in the tumult of travel, I seem to have lost it… Which seems appropriate, since part of the post was about the curve balls that travel can throw your way sometimes and the flexibility required to deal with them gracefully. But since I lost the draft, I’m going to adapt gracefully (I hope), and give you the abbreviated version. So… deep breath… here goes… We traveled from Tomamu to Sapporo, missed our bus (again), got into the city anyway, enjoyed the wild creativity and technical prowess of the Sapporo Ice Festival, ate some soup curry (honestly one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time - it was stunningly good),...Read More

Chapel on the Water

Posted on by Caroline
Here without comment, a few photos from our visit to the Chapel on the Water, at night in February. I’d love to come back again and again at different times of day and in different seasons…. Snow falling at the entrance... Descent down to the chapel... In the sanctuary, looking out at the frozen lake, with the grove in the background... Exiting the sanctuary and entering the bright light of the antechamber... Departing the site and looking back at the cross, the lake and the forest grove...

Tomamu

Posted on by Caroline
We arrived to Tomamu late on Sunday night - we had a few moments of abject fear when we heard an announcement that a few trains from the Chitose airport were getting canceled due to snow. But it didn't affect us directly, so when we arrived we took a little time to explore this resort before tucking into bed. Of all the ski resorts we've visited over the past few years, this has to be one of my favorites. The resort must be able to accommodate many thousands of guests, but yet the way they sited and designed it, the footprint sits lightly on the land. From many view points throughout the complex, you feel as if you're sitting in...Read More

Back to Osaka…?

Posted on by Caroline
We’re on the Haruka Train, heading into Osaka for the second time this month. Tomorrow we’ll catch another flight up to Hokkaido for skiing and the Ice Festival. A week ago there was so much snow that the airport and trains shut down. Hopefully it’s still there. We planned this trip months and months ago, hoping that the snow would show up and we could get the time off of school and work. But now we’re here, and I’m not working any more and the kids are homeschooling, and so we just needed to coordinate with Tim’s work and Amelia’s soccer schedule. Amelia’s team had a game last night that was so much fun to watch - the girls were...Read More

Goodbye for now, Osaka!

Posted on by Caroline
We’re on the Nankai Express, heading to the Kansai Airport from our Airbnb headquarters in Osaka. The Airbnb we stayed at was perfect for the kids - a Mario World extravaganza. It came with mini-Vespas, a Mario pipe tunnel into the dance room (a dance room!!!), a popcorn maker, a cotton candy maker and bedroom themes like ‘Space’, ‘Pirates’, ‘Sweets’, and ‘Cars’. It also had a Nintendo with Mario Cart. Last night we played a full bracket tournament with all ten of us - head-to-head, single elimination. Accompanied by cotton candy and popcorn. It was a blast! We ticked many items off our list - Universal Studios, Osaka Castle (at least from the outside), the Aquarium, and Katsuoji. As always,...Read More

Kastuo-ji

Posted on by Caroline
We’re on day three of our trip to Osaka with our friends. We’ve adopted the name of 6-4 Okay for our trips because inevitably when we’re in Japan and announce that we’re a party of 10, the response is usually a look of surprise, followed by Tim saying “Betsu, betsu!”, which in my head I’ve translated as “Separate, separate!”, and then we get a nod and “Six, four, okay?” And we nod back, “Six, four, okay!” We traveled with our friends on a trip like this three years ago. I feel like that was a formative trip for us in a lot of ways. The kids bonded on that trip and the relationship has held, even as they’ve all grown....Read More

Back in the saddle…

Posted on by Caroline
Can we just agree that 2025 was a funky year? It was a funky year for us. We had some major upheavals last year: we decided to enroll the kids in a local school for 2025-26, we had some health-related turmoil, and we had family issues back in the states. All in all, it added up to a lot more time in the air flying back and forth, but oddly less time traveling for fun. I feel lucky that we were in a position to make the time we needed to spend with family, and we got a lot out of our time at school. The kids made new friends, and were challenged and stretched to adapt to a new...Read More

Wrapping Up the Magic (for now)

Posted on by Caroline
We left Taupō later than we expected and got in late to Waitomo, the home of glow worm caves. If felt like we were in the middle of nowhere - by the time we got there it was dark, and the sky was littered with more stars than I’ve seen for a very long time. Awe-inspiring. The next morning, we were up to take a tour of the glow worm caves. We weren’t able to take pictures, so you may have to google it, because it was truly otherworldly - in a boat with the gentle sounds of the river lapping the sides, and only blue-ish glowing worms lighting the ceiling and walls of the cave. They are a strange,...Read More