Blogs from Ueno, Tokyo, Japan, Asia - page 3

{Anna} We went to a street market in Tokyo. It was very busy with lots of people buying things. Some of the people were wearing masks. Dad said it was to stop others from catching a cold. You can buy lots of strange food like Octopus and Seaweed. I was getting hungry. Dad said we could look for a McDonalds or try "something different". I said lets try something different so we went to eat a a place called a Ramen Bar. We had some noodles. {Dad} Going to a street market in any country is always an interesting experience! You can see all sorts of fresh food such as fruit, vegetables and fish. You will discover lots of food that you may not have seen before because you cannot always buy it in our country ... read more

So here we are, my first real blog! We have done so much, it feels like we've been away forever already, it's not even been 2 weeks! I'm sitting in our hotel in Beijing, China, with my diary open ready to write and I can't believe we have done so much! It could be a long blog, make a cup of tea!! ;) 15/10/12 I shall start at the beginning...it's a very good place to start! Our plane journey was pretty successful, a nice Virgin flight! Thanks to Claire and Kiran, we got to enjoy a lovely lounge before our flight. It was nice to relax before we headed off on our big scary (and exciting) adventure! We had some nice food and nibbles (started off the day as it continued!). Plane journey was good, 12 ... read more

I love zoos and this is a pretty good one! Ueno zoo in the huge Ueno park! When i last visited it was november and the weather was not great so the zoo was pretty empty, not so this time round there were more tiny kids in little coloured hats than i have ever seen before ? it was total carnage! The animals are presumably used to it having the screaming masses come charging around shouting kawaii in high pitched voices!! Loved every second of it tho i got jumped by 3 or 4 groups of school kids to get my picture taken and fill in the "meet a foreigner" sheet, AWESOME! I did have to buy a second umbrella tho as it rained a bit ? got lots of pictures tho! I'll do another post ... read more

It's almost 2:00 PM here at LAX as I'm writing these words, about an hour from boarding time on my flight on Singapore Airlines to Narita. I assumed with the length of layover I have here (over six hours) there would be plenty of time to update my travel blog. However, I haven't been able to access the Internet despite a tantalizing list of network names that seem to be some various of "LAX-WiFi." The flight to LAX on Alaskan Airlines was very pleasant. I sat in a window seat in row 23, right behind the wing. There were some great views taking off and landing. The middle seat was empty and my neighbor at the aisle quietly alternated sleeping and reading. I read the entire in flight magazine and then finished reading a free YA ... read more

K- Tokyo is home to 35 million people so I was expecting chaos when we arrived there. However, it is also built for 35 million people with wide roads and pavements so surprisingly we never felt the craziness I expected. Even at Shibuya junction, the worlds busiest cross street which services 100,000 people an hour (!) it did not feel that busy - probably because the zebra crossing was about 15 feet wide. Although we spent some time exploring the city and enjoying the neon displays our visit to Tokyo turned out to be all about cherry blossoms and of course hanami - cherry blossom parties. We had arrived in Japan at prime time but the season was late and I was increasingly worried that we were going to miss out. Every place we visited we ... read more