Japan

I cooked a big breakfast and we slowly got moving. I have been loving cooking for everyone in our Airbnb. We left and took a moment to appreciate the perfect weather and unreal foliage. We set off for Matsumoto city, which was about 1.5 hours away but felt longer. This part of Japan has the…

Millie slept a record-breaking 16 hours straight last night. When she was finally up she was completely back to normal. If I was a crazy billionaire who wanted to live forever I’d be harvesting her stem cells. We spent the morning doing almost nothing. Nick built a fire. I made egg sandwiches. Millie got lots…

Everyone woke up well enough to get to the train station. We packed up our disastrous hotel room and all met in the lobby at 10:30 to call two Ubers to take us to the train station. It is funny to travel as a pack of 5 and have to do things like get 2…

Today will truly be the shortest post ever. I slept badly last night because my throat felt like knives. My mom took Millie out for breakfast to let us sleep in, but then texted me to say Millie seemed a little off too. She came back to the room and felt warm. We took her…

We took our time getting out this morning and didn’t try to get to Disneyland for their “rope drop” at 9AM. Before yesterday, I didn’t even know what the concept of a “rope drop” was. We are not Disney people. We had some trouble with the trains (a line got cancelled last minute for some…

We rode the subway over to Ueno park this morning. It was gray and drizzling and everyone was wiped from so much walking yesterday, so we decided the best plan was to visit some museums. Our first stop was the Nature & Science museum. We spent a while here looking at fossils, taxidermied animals, etc.…

Day 200! Feels like yet another milestone. After breakfast and showers and playing we all got on the subway to Shibuya. From the station we walked up to Yoyogi park. There we found two different (I think) festivals. The first seemed like some sort of government funded food and wellness market. Each stall was doing…

Big day of lots of walking today. After hotel breakfast buffet (C+ at this hotel) we all got ready. Millie worked on reading and writing with my mom. She seems to have more patience when it’s not one of us trying to teach her. Her adorable birthday present wishlist: We walked about 30 minutes to…

Last night my parents agreed to take Millie for the day to give us a day off. She went to bed so excited that she woke up at 3am and asked if it was time to go to their room yet. She then cried for 30 minutes before passing out in our bed. When it…

We had an uneventful flight from Hakodate to Tokyo this morning. After flying so much on the trip, domestic flights are a walk in the park. No customs on either side? Even Millie noticed as we were leaving and said “that was fast!” She was excited from the moment she woke up because Tokyo meant…