For Leanne’s 33rd birthday I threw her a surprise party!

A journey of a thousand km begins with a single step.. on the Michinoku Shiokaze trail!

This 1000 km trail (over 600 miles!) starts at Hachinohe (about 45 min drive from us). Leanne and I went to the trailhead and walked the whole thing!

Just kidding of course. But we did walk a lot, maybe about 5 miles of it. Six miles if you include Miles the puppy!

Oirase Gorge is a beautiful river valley in Japan replete with waterfalls, nature, and trails. With the leaves changing color, it was the perfect time to see the valley. We are so lucky it’s only an hour drive away; so many people were there from Taiwan, Australia, and other foreign countries to see the site. The gorge itself is about 8 and a half miles long, so we only saw a portion of it. I want to come back each season and see how everything changes.

Every year when the leaves change color, there is a crysanthemum festival at Hirosaki Castle. We went this year! The castle itself was.. small. Not like European castles at all. However, the area around was truly grand. At night, there was a 3D dragon and bird sculpture that was lit up to animate it and make it look like it was moving.

Our local mall has a Pokémon Center Pop Up shop for the one month only. Naturally, it’s the most popular store in the whole mall. Pokémon is big in America, no doubt, but it’s hard to express just how big Pokémon is here.

On our last day in Tokyo we went to TeamLab Planets, an interactive art exhibit that is just really cool. There’s no way to describe it well or capture it on video, so you’ll just have to come see it.

According to their website:

“Together with Others, Immerse your Entire Body, Perceive with your Body, and Become One with the World

teamLab Planets is a museum where you walk through water, and a garden where you become one with the flowers. It comprises 4 large-scale artwork spaces and 2 gardens created by art collective teamLab.

People go barefoot and immerse their entire bodies in the vast artworks together with others. The artworks change under the presence of people, blurring the perception of boundaries between the self and the works. Other people also create change in the artworks, blurring the boundaries between themselves and the works, and creating a continuity between the self, the art, and others.”

Neither of us are big into art but I’ve gotta say this exhibit was actually really cool.

After some last minute Tokyo food, subway confusion, and Pokémon Go playing, it was time to head home to Misawa. When we arrived it was in the 40s to 50s and it has already snowed north of us in nearby Hokkaido prefecture. Time to get out the coats!

Disney! This was the highlight of the trip for sure. We went to Tokyo Disneyland, which is akin to Orlando’s Disney World Magic Kingdom. One major difference was the Beauty and the Beast ride however which is a Japan exclusive. Another big difference is that popcorn is huge here! We tried berry cheesecake and matcha white chocolate but there was also soy sauce flavor, salted, and a couple other flavors. The lines were so long though so we just got to try the two this time and they were both really delicious. Since it was Halloween, they completely redid the Haunted Mansion to a Nightmare Before Christmas theme which was really incredible to see. Also, we got to see the Spooky Boo Parade (equal parts spooky and cute) which only takes place this time of year, as well as the Electrical Parade which I miss in Orlando Disney World since it stopped when I was a kid. Luckily Leanne got to experience this magic from my childhood.

Today was all about checking out all the different neighborhoods of Tokyo.

After checking out Shinjuku which has high end fashion, shopping, business, and most importantly Disney and Samsung stores, we went to Harajuku and Takeshita Street. Here we ate matcha tiramisu crepes and went to a puppy café! A café, filled with puppies, that you can play with and feed! Leanne had a lot of fun here.

The other best part of Shinjuku was the Samsung Galaxy store.. no, I should say experience, in Shinjuku. This 6 story building is filled not only with all the latest models of Samsung phone/watch gadgets, but also tons of interactive areas including one room where you can interact with dinosaurs! Dinosaurs are all throughout the walls and you can send arrows from your Galaxy phone to catch them. Once caught you can release them back to the “wild.” The experience was actually really cool!

After all this, we went to our Disney hotel because tomorrow is a big day. Tomorrow is Disneyland Tokyo.

This is my second time in Tokyo and Leanne’s first time. I wanted her to have the same amazing experience I had 11 years ago. I didn’t realize it would end up being a new experience for me too!

We started in Asakusa which has the big temple Senso-ji that is one of the most visited temples in Japan. There were tons of vendors outside with great street food.

Video: Leanne getting a fortune in front of the Senso-ji temple.

After this we went to Ueno Park, a refuge from the crazy cityness of Tokyo.

In front of the reflection pool in Ueno.

In Ueno park there was a 150 year celebration of.. something (my Japanese is still coming along), and there were lots of stands for environmental protection. And since Japan is so cute, there were also panda stuff everywhere.

In the evening after going to Akihabara electric city, we went to Shibuya scramble crossing. According to Wikipedia: “Shibuya Crossing is the world’s busiest pedestrian crossing, with as many as 3,000 people crossing at a time.” So many people, holy moly!

Our hotel is in Shinjuku area (that blue tower straight ahead in the next pic). So much still to see and do but we have to sleep sometime!

We took a tour about 3 hours from home to the Ryuseendo Caves. This cave system is a limestone cave, of which 3100 meters have been explored (the cave is believed to be about 5000 meters total). We got to see a lot of it, and saw the deep, super clear underground lakes (up to 98 meters deep!), stalactites, and stalagmites. We didn’t see a bat in the cave even though we really looked, but we ended up seeing a bat in another close by much smaller cave.

Right outside the cave is beautiful nature of Japan which we walked around.

After spelunking, we went to an amber museum and made amber jewelry. Amber is from tree sap up to 85 million years ago. One of the biggest mining sites for amber is here where we made the jewelery in Japan.