Winter Hibernation

Hello loyal blog readers! I completely disappeared for the last two months, didn't I? I apologize, I'm back, and I've got some good adventures to catch up on.

To begin with, a big snowstorm swept through Tokyo (and the surrounding Kanto area) yesterday. It was beautiful to watch from inside my cozy apartment, but I was glad not to be out in it or needing to take public transportation. I'm sure the trains were snarled up terribly.

The snow is already quickly melting off, but I got a few good photos before it totally disappears. This year is a La Nina year, so it's likely to be snowier than usual. I was becoming skeptical but then yesterday proved me wrong. I'm curious what the rest of winter will be like. The last time we had snow like this was four or five years ago. (And I'll just add that the iPhone 7 camera is much better than the iPhone 5)

For now here are the snow pictures, but more to come soon: travel, afternoon tea, novelty food reviews and more!

It's snowing!!!

Already melting off the next morning

Possibly the cutest snowman ever?

Cooling Down

It's amazing how much the weather can impact my attitude. It's finally been cooling down, and the skies are bright and clear after what felt like a summer full of rain. As the weather has improved I've found myself feeling so much more cheerful, and positive about Tokyo. When it's miserable outside and everywhere inside is crowded I can get quite down about living here. But then thankfully the weather changes, and my outlook with it.

I've been going on walks lately, and enjoying being outside again. Not much else is new, but here's a quick glimpse of some day to day highlights. 

Lunch with little friends

And dessert with bigger friends

Watermelon softserve and frozen s'mores at Dominique Ansel - beautiful and legitimately yummy!

A recent protest against the TV station in my neighborhood

My kind of bicycle

July Update

It's well and truly summer now. We're had several days above 90 degrees, and last week the cicadas came out. If the last couple weeks are any indication it's shaping up to be a brutally hot summer too. Everyone I've talked to agrees, it's already hotter than the last two summers at least.

Perversely, my mind keep daydreaming of fall - grapes and pears and fall leaves and hiking (for some reason hiking seems like a fall activity). Then I have to remind myself it's only the middle of July.

But, July is my birth month, and it's been fun celebrating. There's been lots of good food and fun with friends.

This guy knows how to do summer

Summer Cooking - Corn Tacos with Zucchini  Radish Slaw  

Pre-birthday lunch (delicious Greek food not pictured)

Pre-birthday Desserts with Raku

Just look at the detail - tiny sugar dew drops!

Just as pretty as all the desserts

Birthday Flowers

Birthday Gelato

Godzilla Spotted at a Beer Garden

Springtime

If you go by the Japanese calendar it's already spring, though the western calendar says we've still got a few more weeks of winter. Either way a few warm days are starting to sneak in and the flowers are starting to bloom. Cherry blossoms are less than a month away, and the plum blossoms are out in full force. It's one of my favorite times of year in Tokyo!

Ume (plum) blossoms

In Yoyogi park

My new hina matsuri (Girl's Day) furoshiki

Pansies in Azabu Juban

Winter Update

I can hardly contain my excitement. In two days John and I are going on vacation. It's going to be WARM where we're headed. And on top of that, John's mom just got a plane ticket to come visit us this spring!

On Monday morning we woke up to a blanket of snow, which was initially beautiful. But unfortunately then it rained heavily for several hours creating a much less appealing blanket of slush. At least it was still fun to wake up to. We haven't had any more snow since, but it has been so cold this week! I am so so so looking forward to being somewhere warm for a week. With all the excitement of Raku's baby it's been hard to remember we're off to Bangkok and then Melbourne so soon. It's going to be amazing.

I'm also really looking forward to John's mom visiting. It's going to be so fun to show her around. It's probably really obvious, but we have gotten SO much better at planning for and hosting guests the longer we've lived here. 

Snowy Monday Morning

Star Wars Furoshiki

Holiday Week

Yesterday was Labor Thanksgiving Day, so it was a three day weekend here in Japan, and later this week is American Thanksgiving. It's feeling quite festive around here. I'm getting ingredients together and getting ready to cook up a storm on Thursday.

The weather has been getting cooler - it feels so crisp and refreshing outside and I even put our winter duvet on the bed over the weekend. The leaves are changing too. This afternoon on my walk home it was so quiet outside that I could actually hear the leaves falling. This is one of my favorite times of year in Tokyo.

I've been thinking a lot about how next year is going to be different. Raku's having her baby, and I'm closing in on finishing the second draft of my book. I don't know really know what's coming next, but I'm excited to find out. A few days ago we decorated a bunch of clothes for Raku's baby - I can't believe her due date is just 6 weeks away!

Clearly, we were meant to design baby high fashion

Cold weather means soup

Fall colors

Tokyo Autumn

I love fall in Tokyo. As the weather cools down and the air starts to feel clean again I find myself making a point of spending more time outdoors and it puts me in such a good mood! The leaves haven't really started changing yet, but they will soon. The nights are coming early, and I know it will start to feel gloomy eventually, but for now I'm enjoying it as the evenings are now filled with bustling sidewalks lit by glowing streetlights.

Our neighborhood bar

Overgrown Walkway

Ichigo Daifuku - I've been all about anko (sweetened red bean paste) lately.

Pretty mural in Shimokitazawa

Strawberries are a winter fruit in Japan (thanks to greenhouses.) These are the first I've seen this season.

Visiting Cambodia: Angkor Wat

At the end of May and beginning of June John and I took a week long trip with our friends, split between Cambodia (Angkor Wat) and Vietnam (Hanoi). It was an absolutely magical experience, and I'm so glad we went!

If you've never heard of it before, Angkor Wat is a huge temple complex (more than 400 sq kilometers!) in Cambodia that was built by the Khmer Empire in the 12th Century. Angkor Wat is technically the name of the main temple, but the entire archaeological park is also known by the same name. The nearby town where we stayed is named Siem Reap.

If you're just here for the pictures please feel free to skip the rest and enjoy the photos - it was so hard to narrow it down to even this many, and I've still dumped a ton. But if you're planning a trip yourself, or you like reading intricate travel details I've tried to include all the information I would have found the most useful.

We spent three nights in Siem Reap, with two days dedicated to Angkor Wat and a final day spent in Siem Reap before an evening flight to Hanoi. June is the beginning of rainy season in Cambodia while March through May are the hottest months of the year. We were lucky to not see any rain, but wow was it hot! The benefit though, was that we were traveling during the low season so prices were lower, reservations were easier to get, and everything was much less crowded. If you're thinking about going at this time of year but worried about the heat, I  highly recommend it. It's definitely hot, and you'll be sweating most of the day, but the temples are so amazing you'll be distracted a lot of the time. I think I'm a wimp when it comes to heat: I start sweating pretty quickly, get grumpy about it, and I definitely had the fairest skin among our group, but honestly, it was pretty manageable. With hats and a couple sunscreen applications a day none of us burned - in fact I didn't even get the slightest tan. We also tried stay hydrated, luckily our driver always had bottles of water in the car, and it's easily purchased just about everywhere.

The best advice I have for Angkor Wat is to hire a car to drive you around. We found that a car would cost $34-$45 per day while a tuk-tuk (basically a covered cart attached to a motorcycle) would cost $12 per day. With four people it was especially practical because we figured we could all fit in one car or we could pay for two tuk-tuks. And you better believe it was worth the extra money to be in an enclosed air conditioned space to catch our breathes between temples. Besides the air conditioning, Angkor Wat is a pretty dusty place - at least during the dry season, and I can imagine it would be a lot less pleasant to be breathing in all that dust. Additionally, if you're interested in going to any of the more remote temples this will save you tons of time. We went to Beng Mealea, which took about 45 minutes in the car while our driver said it would take closer to two hours in a tuk-tuk!

When we hired our driver (I did this about three weeks in advance) he offered us two of his most popular routes, though he was very flexible and open to any other ideas we had. We chose one of his itineraries which included a first day seeing most of the "must do" sights in Angkor Wat and then the second day spent going to three outlying temples. In hindsight I think this was the better option for several reasons, first of all the outlying temples are absolutely stunning and far less crowded - Beng Mealea in particular was everyone's favorite. Second of all, we simply didn't have the stamina on the second day to do as much as we did on the first. By going to fewer sights further out on the second day we had more time resting in an air conditioned car, putting all of us in a better mood. 

Our exact itinerary was: Day 1: Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom City (Bayon, Phimean Akas, Baphoun, Elephant Terrace, Terrace of the Leper King), Ta Prohm. (Note: we ended up getting a little off track in Angkor Thom and seeing more temples than we meant to. To compensate for time and energy we skipped Banteay Kdey and Sras Srong which our driver had initially planned to take us to.) Day 2: Preah Khan, Banteay Srey, Beng Mealea. 

It's hard to rank the places we saw, but Beng Mealea, Ta Prohm, and Preah Khan were my personal favorites because they were so wild feeling. Ta Prohm is the temple where Tomb Raider was filmed, and Beng Mealea is a completely unrestored temple in the jungle where local guides will help you pick your way through and over the crumbling stones. In terms of sheer size Angkor Wat and Bayon are absolutely stunning. It's amazing to imagine these enormous places being built by hand so long ago! And Banteay Srey is interesting because it was built separately two centuries earlier and with a red stone that looked different from any of the other temples. I didn't actually love it, but when my friend Sarah went it was her favorite.

Everyone recommends that you start your days early in Angkor Wat, and I completely agree. We headed out each morning at 8:00, which really helped with both the heat and the crowding. By starting so early we were finished by lunchtime, when we would have our driver drop us off in town. After eating lunch we'd take tuk-tuks back to the hotel, shower, and then lounge by the pool until the evening when it was cool enough to go back out for dinner and drinks.

A final note, Raku and I wondered about the bathroom situation in Angkor Wat before we went and couldn't find much online, so we made a point to go before leaving each morning, brought tissues with us and prepared for the worst. But on the first day we sweated so much that it wasn't even an issue. The second day we did ask our driver for a bathroom break, and it was not trouble at all. There was a bathroom less than five minutes away that was free to anyone with the Angkor Wat Pass to get into the park. The bathroom was a little rustic but clean, with sinks, western style toilets and toilet paper! 

First stop of the morning: Angkor Wat

Preah Khan

Resting in the shade at Angkor Wat

View from Angkor Wat

These intricate carvings are everywhere, they must have taken so long to do!

Chicken snacking on someone's coconut

The giant faces at Bayon

Temple Kitties

Strangle Fig Tree at Ta Prohm

Some of the roots are so heavy that supports have been installed at Ta Prohm

The red sandstone at Banteay Srey

A crumbling courtyard at Beng Mealea

Read About the Rest of Our Trip:
Visting Cambodia: Siem Reap
Visiting Hanoi: The City
Visiting Hanoi: The Food
Visiting Hanoi: The Sofitel Metropole
Afternoon Tea at The Metropole

Summer Vacation

I can't believe how quickly the spring has flown by! May has been a wonderful month of warm weather and everything has sprung back into bloom in the city - it's so lush and green right now. Rainy season and then the sweltering summer will be here too soon, but the time is filling up with so many plans that I'm still looking forward to it.

John and I leave tomorrow morning with Raku and her husband for a week long vacation in Cambodia and Vietnam. This will be our first time in Southeast Asia, and I'm really excited for it. We'll be visiting Angkor Wat in Cambodia and then spending the second half of our trip in Hanoi. The weather is supposed to be brutally hot, but I hope that it makes the summer in Japan more bearable in comparison. I'll definitely be blogging all about our trip once we're back.

When we return from Vietnam a friend of ours from high school who currently lives in Kyushu will be in Tokyo, so it will be fun to catch up with her. Then just a week after that John's sister will arrive for her two week visit! After that things will calm down for a little bit, but in August we'll be going back to the US for John's brother's wedding. All of the upcoming visitors and travel are making me giddy with excitement. 

One of my favorite baristas drew a picture of me!