Taste of Japan: Day 01

I'll be calling these posts of our trip to Tokyo "Taste of Japan" simply because we were there for just over a week. In that week, we covered a lot of ground in Tokyo and Kyoto, but there is so much more we haven't seen. We hope to visit back one day to take in the sights of the different cities of Japan.

We started planning this trip along with three other friends of ours. They arrived to Tokyo a week or so earlier than us, so the plan was to meet them at the hotel. To our surprise, two of our other friends decided to join us as well! Their plans were to fly out of Toronto the same day as us, but different flight.

We arrived in Tokyo and met our friends at Narita Airport, Tokyo, Japan -- which was fun to do because at any other given time, we meet each other in Toronto at a restaurant or someone's house. We travelled to our hotel which was located in the Shinagawa area of Tokyo and met up our other friends and by then, we were seven strong. We got settled in to our rooms and set out to get something to eat. We roamed the hotel area for a bit and it was time to retire to bed as it was a long day for the four of us who arrived that day.

Jet lag. That was the talk of the town before we left for Japan. Tokyo is +13hrs ahead of Toronto, so we were really worried about how our bodies would react the first couple of days we got there. We read some articles online and one important piece of information was: it's all mental. We changed the times on our watches and phones half way through the flight, and all the way there, we tried not to think of the sleep we'll lose. More on this in the next few posts...

Japan 2012

A couple days fresh off the 12hr flight back to Toronto, I'm revisiting the pictures I took during our recent stay in Japan. Tokyo was our main destination with a day in Kyoto.

One word to describe Tokyo? I can't find it. Too many words to describe it. I will no longer complain about the traffic or the number of people in Toronto. I used to think it was busy in Toronto, especially during events like baseball games or festivals. Tokyo? It's like that, but every -- single -- day.

If there's one thing I brought back from this trip, it would be to take my time. Despite how busy it was over there, people took their time to get to their destination. Every piece of food, every dish that we ate, was prepared with precision, whether it was a simple sandwich or an elaborate sashimi plate. And even when it was an elaborate plate, they prepared it with ease and they had fun with it was well.

Everywhere we went was beautiful, whether it was a thousand year old temple, or a newly built shopping mall. Yes, it was busy throughout the entire day in most areas, but at the same time, you can also find quiet and peaceful areas...

...stay tuned.

One Month Away!

There's about one month to Aliya's due date (you may recognize her and Adeel from my last post), and it appears they're all ready to go! The baby room's all set, the prenatal classes are finished, and now, the maternity pictures are complete! The forecast all week didn't show good weather for the weekend, but we had one of the nicest weekends so far, which made the day with Aliya and Adeel that much more enjoyable!

...and just a couple pictures that made us all laugh :)