We weren't in a great hurry today, because as we found out last night, Disneyland is only open incredibly short trading hours during winter. The park opens at 10am, and is closed by 7pm. We made our way downstairs at around 8:30am to the Palm Terrace Hotel's buffet breakfast. Customers purchase a ticket from a vending machine just outside the door to the restaurant for some reason, and inside is a buffet breakfast of eggs, mini hamburgers, corn, a variety of di...

With 3 kids in tow, I may have tried to fit in more than I should have today, but we survived. It was however a massive, but very enjoyable day. I've always wanted to visit Tsukiji fish market, but having young kids, getting them out of bed early enough, and across Tokyo early in the morning, it's never quite worked. Veronica knew I really wanted to go, and Charlotte was very curious to see what it was all about too, so she insisted we go. I decided that I'd f...

It's going to be a very short blog entry today, because honestly we didn't do anything worth writing about. The mission for today was to get ourselves from Hiroshima to the opposite side of Toyko without murdering the children. I'm happy to report that it was a remarkable success. We checked out of the Reino Inn without any of the fanfare that usually goes with a Japanese hotel farewelling a guest. With this hotel, we just left. Since the room keys were just ...

The main reason I wanted to come so far out of our way to return to Hiroshima was to return to Miyajima. I wasn't disappointed. This the first truly exhausting day of the trip, but it has been absolutely worth it. Leaving the hotel before 9am, we planned our route to Miyajima, which consisted of a streetcar, a train and finally the ferry across to the island. We have JR rail passes, which allows free travel on JR trains, and the Miyajima ferry operated by J...

Hiroshima was a fairly late addition to our itinerary. With a couple of days to fill in, and Hiroshima being in the exact opposite direction to everything else we are going to be visiting in Japan, naturally we decided to head there. Actually, I've always said that I wanted to return to Miyajima, a very picturesque island just off the Hiroshima port, so now that Isabelle is old enough to appreciate (and fend off) dears, and possibly monkeys, we thought we'd mak...