We have been in Japan for around a week now

and there is so much to see...

And to do. Getting up in the morning crossing the corner just to meet Anna and Ellen`s ninja teacher all ready to "fight"

Of course when visiting Japan you meet Geisha`s

There are lots of nice cars here, but some still prefer the old fashioned hard way....

Crossing the street, seeing Batmobil with Batman and Robin, Daniel could almost not believe his eyes.

Going to Odaiba, so beautiful.

                                          Visiting Legoland Discovery center

Among other things we could design our own blocks

                                         My weight is 20 000 lego bricks

Seeing Mt Fuji, unfortunately we could not get up to the mountain since the road was closed (slippery) but we got a great view of the mountain from the bus and the cable car..

Hot spring from where we took the cable car, smells like...rotten eggs

We took Shinkansen (bullet train) back to Tokyo

Tokyo station celebrates 100 year

The word "crowded" will not explain how many people who where there...and police

We tried local dishes, as well as bakeries, burgers, pizza and pasta...whatever you like it is all here...

(Burger king here have a speciality that is a black burger so it is not burned it is supposed to look like this. Taste? Like any other burger...

We been to the elegant Ginza with Prada, Gucci and all of that, and we visited the Sony building

We are taking the subway and train criss cross Tokyo

According to wikipedia more than 6 million people use these lines every day! And the punctuality is extreme with trains departing every 5 minutes...

And good for us, the stations are  switching displaying Japanese and English

We met Keiko and her great family again at Sony exploration center in Odaiba

And we tried generating power through "spinning a wheel" together, and this technology is exported to the Ivory coast

Inside it was many things we could touch and play with

We are having a great time, enjoying every minute, taking care of each other and happy we have more days to spend here.

And soon you too will see more pictures

Nagomi Visit

December 23th we visited Keiko and Yoshihiko and their beautiful daughters Momo (peach) and An (apricot). We met through Nagomi visit, and if you ever go to Japan we highly recommend you to make reservation through them.

https://www.nagomivisit.com

Through their site, you tell if you like lunch or dinner, and at which date. Then they get back to you with a few suggestions and a presentation and you get to choose. Since we are seven people we were not sure if to find a match with space for all of us, but Nagomi visit got back to us we three options to choose from. Amazing.

We went to Meguro station, and were met by the family, and as agreed upon in advance a journalist and photographer from a magazine called Mom (A Japanese magazine aimed at mothers) were joining us. You can check out their website here, and maybe you will find and article with us there one day as well.

https://www.aeon.co.jp/sp_aeoncard/service/mom/

Our first visit to a Japanese home, look at the beautiful set table and all the great food they have prepared. I can assure you it tasted great.

They really made us feel welcome, and had written the menu in both Japanese and English. The front says "velkommen" which means welcome, in Norwegian. We were so impressed.

Yoshihiko was showing us around in their nice house, and after that we all sat around the table for an excellent meal.

After the meal, the kids got time to play....

We were able to ask all the questions we had about Japan. On of the most interesting things was to see the girls school book. The language here is really complicated with so many signs/words/pictures they have to memorize.

After looking at the girls school book, Ellen stated that she will never complain about any Norwegian class ever again.....

To meet like this is about so much more than sharing a meal. Its an unique way to let cultures meet, to share stories, having a good time and an opportunity to build new friendships. 

We really had a great time, and have already decided to meet again in a few days.

Thank you.

We are in Japan - Tokyo

This holiday we decided to go to Japan, Why? One of the reasons is that we have never been here before, second reason is that it is Anna`s dream, and third because this has been a challenging year for us as a family. It has been the most amazing year when it comes to traveling, but the change from being 6 till "only" 5 has not been easy for anybody, and one way of dealing with grief is to distract ourselves with new experiences building new memories and share a good time together as the family we now are.

We been lucky to have two other great "kids" traveling with us, they are my cousins children and they also like to visit Japan. So far we are having the best time together all 7 of us.

We started from Gardermoen December 20th, and the weather was not the best so we had a delay...

"killing time" the best way we could. First flight was Oslo-Copenhagen, and we thought we would not make it till the next flight. Luckily for us, the pilots were at the same flight as us, in Copenhagen we were running between the gates and we made it.

Our next flight was Copenhagen-Tokyo, about 10 hours in the air...flying over areas that we never been before...

Flight was long, but the plane had movies and even games (tetris - hurray:) so it went quite ok.

Finally landing in Tokyo, of course our suitcases were left in Copenhagen...which was both good and bad. At the airport we met the sample of how extremely helpful the Japanese are. When leaving the plane it was a note with our name, with a message where to go to get information about our luggage. Once there, we filled up the papers, got some compensation and this great woman lead us to the right bus.

After the bus we went on the subway, and we really got a feeling how huge this city is. With a population of 13 million, it is crowded...and the subway system have so many lines. But we made it, and at this point we were happy we did not have 6 suitcases to carry.

All set in the hostel we are staying at now, we went out to buy food. "Normally when we travel we find things we are used to, but that is not the case here, since Japan try to import as little as they can.
The stores are full, they are really not missing anything, but it is not so easy to understand what the products contain of...so we just had to try.

Anna is probably the person I know who is best with communicating through body language, and in her mysterious way she managed to find butter, noodles and toothbrush among the other things we wanted.

Back at the hostel we ate, and went to sleep. It is 8 hours time difference between Norway and Japan, and I have to admit that for me jet lag is never easy. The boys seems to be the same as me, but the girls have adjusted better.

For now, we are staying close to one of the most popular places for tourists, the Senso-ji temple. (Later we will move to a different location)

At the temple you can get a prediction for the future, by an interesting system. You shake a box, out comes a stick, you recognize the symbol of your stick with the drawers and take out  a note....I am happy to say that our future looks bright and happy according to this..

The whole area around the temple is beautiful and interesting. It was founded in 628 and even though it has been destroyed by fire many times it has been rebuilt. Last time was in 1958.

In this area it is also a tiny amusement park which Adam and Helene visited, and a ninja class that Ellen and Anna participated in.

This city has so much to offer, and this is only just outside our doorstep. We have done lots already, and will do much more. Bottom line is, we are having the best time.