Hey all, On Day 1 of our trip to Hiroshima, we did not arrive until later in the afternoon because it took nearly 4 hours to get there from Tokyo by Shinkansen. Once in Hiroshima, we walked to our nearby hotel (only about 5 minutes from the train station) to check in and dump off our stuff, before venturing out! First, we walked to the nearby Shukkeien Park and walked around in its beautiful garden grounds. Here we strolled around a pond, watched the turtles and crabs, and enjoyed the nice weather we had. Next, we walked over to Hiroshima Castle. [View Full Entry]

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Hello everybody! On this particular Saturday night, Larry, myself and a few friends decided to go out to Roppongi in search of the infamous Absolut Ice Bar.... We began the evening by having a quaint dinner at a Persian restaurant called Aladdin. Here, the food was a mixture of Arabic & Greek foods and was very delicious! Although it all tasted good though, Genia's dinner looked like a plate of poo, and so she kept us entertained throughout the entire meal with hilarious comments about her food!!! After dinner, we headed to the Absolut Ice Bar. No one really knew exactly [View Full Entry]

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Today we ventured out to Yokohama, another large city about an hour away from Tokyo. We had heard that Yokohama had quite a large and famous Chinatown, and we really wanted to check that out as well.... Once we arrived in Chinatown, we immediately realized that although similar to NYC's Chinatown, there were two main differences: The first being that this Chinatown was MUCH cleaner than that of New York's, but alas, was much more EXPENSIVE as well (food, shopping, etc!) In fact, it took us awhile just to find a restaurant for lunch that wouldn't cost us over 5,000 yen/person [View Full Entry]

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Hi all! On this particular evening in July, Larry, myself and a few other friends decided to dress up in Japanese yukata's and spend a few hours on a Yukata Tokyo Bay Cruise. Not everyone wore yukatas, but most people did....esp. the "gaijin" (foreigners!) Unfortunately though, we weren't very good at putting them on. I had to get some help at the Ito Yokato (a department store that sells everything from groceries to yukata's) from a lady who couldn't speak a word of English. She took a long time "wrapping me up," but she did do a beautiful job! Larry's yukata [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone, As some of you already know, I recently celebrated my 25th birthday here in Tokyo. After a couple dinners and parties with my friends and fiance, I realized that getting older isn't always such a bad thing! The first couple of pictures are from July 9th, my actual birthday, when Larry took me to the beautiful Tokyo Emion Bay Hotel for a delicious, Italian dinner at a restaurant called LaLa. LaLa, as you can see by the picures, was a gorgeous place....only lit up by candlelight. I even got a special dessert here with the message "Happy Birthday Melanie" [View Full Entry]

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On Danny's 4th day here, which also happened to be July 4th - although not really a big deal here in Japan, we went to Asakusa. Asakusa is known for its famous Kaminarimon Gate, as well as it's beautiful temple and 5-storey pagoda. Unfortunately though, when we visited the temple and got our fortunes this time, Danny and I had bad fortunes, but Larry had "best fortune" twice in a row!! NOT FAIR! After visiting Asakusa's history, we decided to search for another conveyor-belt sushi restaurant, because Danny could just not get enough of it! Well, after a few phone calls [View Full Entry]

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Danny arrived to Narita International Airport in Tokyo after a really long flight, but was ready to explore from the moment he got off the plane. After meeting up with him at Shin-Urayasu train station, I took him to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants: Saizyeria! Saizyeria has all kinds of western-like, Italian food, and I especially like the glasses of wine for 99 yen each! After dinner, I took him to my small, studio apartment at E-Village and gave him a tour....which obviously didn't take too long! Then I gave him a belated birthday gift, we hung out with [View Full Entry]

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After our 13 hour flight and a few days of meeting up with friends and family, we had the pleasure of celebrating my brother Terry and his fiance Lisa's wedding. The wedding was beautiful in every way, with many romantic and humorous incidents along the way. To start our day, Terry hired a nice limo to take us from Shoreham, Long Island to Staten Island, where Lisa is from and where the wedding took place. The limo ride was alot of fun and a good chance to catch up with my siblings, while Melanie and everyone else were scheduled to take [View Full Entry]

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On June 21st, Larry and I headed to Narita Airport to fly home to NYC for about a week for his brother Terry's wedding. I was able to leave because, luckily, I was on a two-week vacation due to renovations of the theatre that my show takes place. Larry had to get work a few 7-day weeks to get the time off, but after our short visit, we both knew that it was a trip well worth our time - Not only for the beautiful wedding that we got to attend, but also to be able to see some of our [View Full Entry]

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Here are some pictures from a few fun things we did towards the end of June.... The first couple of pictures are from our friend Missy's birthday party. Her actual birthday was June 8th, but we didn't all get together until almost a week later, on June 14th. We all celebrated with dinner at Monsoon's, a really delicious restaurant right by the Disney parks, and then finished off the evening with gelato. We went to a great place where they have many new and unique flavors everyday, including caramel yogurt, tiramisu, and even BEER!! All in all, a great night with [View Full Entry]

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