On our way home

Wow! This trip has just flown by. It's Sunday morning and we are leaving this afternoon. I just can't believe it.

We had quite a day yesterday doing our final errands.



Last night we had our last "Sento"(public hot bath.)
We finished up the leftover food, and finished packing up.

It's hard to believe that in two hours we'll be saying goodbye to this wonderful city.... for now!

Out in the country

Hey everyone! We've been staying in Kyoto but the past two days we were up in the country visiting my mom's old friend. It was awesome.

We made our own food. Here are some pictures of home-made Udon. (Udon is a kind of noodle.)







This is me and Benna and some of the other kids catching salamanders in the rice fields.



Here's a picture of when one of the many chickens got inside the house.



Before they drove us back to where we're staying in Kyoto, they brought us to a friend's house that was very "Japanese style." The first picture is of the living room area kind of. It was pretty much a big room with a fire in the middle of it. There was no chimney in the house, the smoke just finds its way out through the roof.



This is the tatami room. It's a big room that most Japanese houses have.



This is the bathroom. There are two separate rooms for bath and toilet. This one is the bath. You first wash yourself off, then get into the bath to soak.



This is the outside of the house. As you can see they are fixing it up. The roof is made of bundles of grass. If you click on the picture you can see me walking out of the house.



This is our family and the family we stayed with and their neighbors who are very close and were with us most of the time.



We're going back home in just a few days. So, see you soon!

-aleeza

Traveling Japan

Hey guys! Sorry I haven't been writing in a while. We've been traveling all around Japan. Tokyo, Sendai, Matsushima, Kanegasaki, Morioka, and now we are in Matsumoto. Next we will go to Hakuba, then Takayama, and finally back to Kyoto.

These are some pictures of me and my sister at this super cool park. The first picture is a huge slide. You get to climb up the rocks or climb up with ropes. See if you can see me and my sister at the top. (Hint - click on the picture and it will get bigger!)



The picture below is my sister and me on these rope thingeys. Unfortunately we didn't get too many pictures of the rest of the rope structure but it was huge and fun. There was also, liker I said, a playground not just made out of ropes that had things like zip-lines, tree houses, a giant stone dinosaur (that you could climb on) and a trampoline-like thing.



After that we went on an alpine slide, called "dream coaster." It was almost like a mini roller coaster, but you were in a single car and controlled your own speed with a lever. Be careful, don't go too fast - my sister was going top speed before we knew it she was on the ground! I went first with my mom, then by myself.



After that, we went on another slide called the "roller slide." It's a slide made out of roller things. There were three sections going down a small hill. This was the shortest of the three sections. There are two slides in this picture side by side, my sister and I wanted to go next to each other but neither of us wanted to go on the green slide because it had bird doo doo on it.

(P.S. - It really kind of hurts your butt!)



- Aleeza

Hey guys - sorry about the video not working on my last post - I'll fix it later.
Last night my dad and sister got in from America. My dad and I went for a walk this morning and saw some shrines and stuff. Here
are some pictures. Enjoy!




These are some school kids that are all wearing matching outfits. We thought it was pretty cute!

The picture on the right is a poster outside a burger shop. The writing on top says "Tower Cheese Burger" in Japanese. Ten burgers with cheese on a bun - WOW!

- Aleeza

kamo river

Hey again everyone! So last night my mom and I went to this super cool place and had a picnic there. It's this river or rivers, how ever you want to say it, where there are these two rivers, that make almost a V shape, except at the bottom tip part of the V, it keeps going down and makes one river. The water is really shallow too, like, below knee height, and there are all these cool stones that you can jump across in the water. Watch the video.

Well, after a straight day and a half of traveling, I'm just glad I made it. It was hard but worth it. These are some pics from today and yesterday.
enjoy!
-aleeza

Finally on our way

well, WERE HERE! I'm so so so so so so so so so so so (x10) excited!
Here's another video from on the plane.
-Aleeza