Willem en Liselotte
15 May 2007
At the end of April the time has finally come; Willem and Liselotte are coming to Japan. A lot of fun, because we haven't seen Willem since last year May. On top of that, we get to meet Liselotte for the first time. Their visits coincides with the Golden Week, this means that we have a few national holidays, and it only takes a few vacation days to be able to travel with them for more than a week. Carlos made a program, and we're all looking forward to it.
First we show them the area around Aizu-Wakamatsu: we visit a waterfall and hike around a vulcanic crater. It's quite a hike to get to the top. There is still some snow left, but in the sun the temperature is very nice.
The second part of the program takes us to Sendai and Matsushima. Sendai is for Willem and Liselotte a bit of a relief, because Aizu-Wakamatsuis only a village of 120.000 inhabints and Sendai has one million. Of course we visit the tourist highlights: Japanese garden, temple, highrise building with beautiful vew. But we also visited an outlet shopping center, a bit of a letdown, but at least we scored something...
eBack in Aizu-Wakamatsu, we visited goshikinuma, various lakes with different colors. We didn't really see the different colors, but the area is beautiful.
So Aizu-Wakamatsu is a village, but one with its own batting range, where you can show your qualities as a baseball batter. We hit some beautiful homeruns...
In the evening, Huib and Tomomi came over, they made dinner for us: a traditional Japanese dish: okonomiyaki.
Then it's time to say goodbye to Aizu-Wakamatsu and we take a roundabout way to get to Tokyo, to drop our visitors off at the airport. But we're not that far yet. Our first night we spend in an onsen hotel. A traditional style hotel, where we sleep on a futon on the floor (on tatami mats) and of course we make use of the shared baths. From the rotemburo (outside bath) we had a beautiful view.
Our next stop is the Alpine Route. A road through the snow, with walls of up to 20 meters high. At least, the is usually the case, because also Japan had a mild winter, so the walls were "only" 14 meters high. It took some effort to get there, car, but and cable car, and of course the neccessary Yens to pay for the experience.
On our way we visited Kurobe Dam. In the picture you can see how big it is, we were very impressed by this beautiful dam.
Then THE destination of the trip: Tokyo !
Of course we visited a temple, and a museum and parks. Unfortunately there were only a few Harajuku Lolita girls out and about. We visited Tokyo Tower and an artist community. But most of all we went shopping and after that shopped some more.... Liselotte is studying Fashion Management, so the Tokyo fashion scene was very interesting for her.
The farewll dinner came too fast.
After we dropped them off at Narita, we took the local roads going home. On the way we visited Nikko. We were lucky to see a traditionally dressed wedding couple, on the most famous bridge in Nikko. Of course we visited the famous temples of Nikko and walked through nature around the town.
First we show them the area around Aizu-Wakamatsu: we visit a waterfall and hike around a vulcanic crater. It's quite a hike to get to the top. There is still some snow left, but in the sun the temperature is very nice.
The second part of the program takes us to Sendai and Matsushima. Sendai is for Willem and Liselotte a bit of a relief, because Aizu-Wakamatsuis only a village of 120.000 inhabints and Sendai has one million. Of course we visit the tourist highlights: Japanese garden, temple, highrise building with beautiful vew. But we also visited an outlet shopping center, a bit of a letdown, but at least we scored something...
eBack in Aizu-Wakamatsu, we visited goshikinuma, various lakes with different colors. We didn't really see the different colors, but the area is beautiful.
So Aizu-Wakamatsu is a village, but one with its own batting range, where you can show your qualities as a baseball batter. We hit some beautiful homeruns...
In the evening, Huib and Tomomi came over, they made dinner for us: a traditional Japanese dish: okonomiyaki.
Then it's time to say goodbye to Aizu-Wakamatsu and we take a roundabout way to get to Tokyo, to drop our visitors off at the airport. But we're not that far yet. Our first night we spend in an onsen hotel. A traditional style hotel, where we sleep on a futon on the floor (on tatami mats) and of course we make use of the shared baths. From the rotemburo (outside bath) we had a beautiful view.
Our next stop is the Alpine Route. A road through the snow, with walls of up to 20 meters high. At least, the is usually the case, because also Japan had a mild winter, so the walls were "only" 14 meters high. It took some effort to get there, car, but and cable car, and of course the neccessary Yens to pay for the experience.
On our way we visited Kurobe Dam. In the picture you can see how big it is, we were very impressed by this beautiful dam.
Then THE destination of the trip: Tokyo !
Of course we visited a temple, and a museum and parks. Unfortunately there were only a few Harajuku Lolita girls out and about. We visited Tokyo Tower and an artist community. But most of all we went shopping and after that shopped some more.... Liselotte is studying Fashion Management, so the Tokyo fashion scene was very interesting for her.
The farewll dinner came too fast.
After we dropped them off at Narita, we took the local roads going home. On the way we visited Nikko. We were lucky to see a traditionally dressed wedding couple, on the most famous bridge in Nikko. Of course we visited the famous temples of Nikko and walked through nature around the town.