New Years holiday

I had 10 days holiday over New Years (my first paid holiday ever!) and Sara was here to visit me. We had a great holiday together with 4 days sightseeing in Tokyo and 5 days snowboarding in the Japanese Alps!

We went to karaoke in Shibuya, slept in the sun in Inokashira Park, strolled down the streets in Harajuku and Omotesando to have a close look of the non-official architectonical competition between the fancy fashion houses, took us to the Imperial Palace Gardens just to discover we came on one of the few days of the year when it’s not open, but had a nice walk in the sun on the outside instead. We also spent a day in “Akiba”, tech-town much enjoyed by westerners but detested and referred to as dangerous and awful by my Tokyo-friends. We visited Miyazaki Hayao’s studio Ghibli and wished either that it was crazier museum and had more of his anime or that we had lower expectations on it. We also wished we had kidnapped one of those cute little Japanese kids playing around in the cat bus. Souvenir shopping was done in Kichijoji and Shibuya and Sara looked closely on every shelf of the 6 story shop LoFT, storing everything you can possibly need for your home and office to make sure she didn’t miss a single thing. A night view over Tokyo city was caught from the charming Tokyo tower.

The trip to Hakuba in the Japanese Alps was amazing! It was snowing like crazy, so the visibility was crap but it wasn’t hard to enjoy the hills anyway, the amount of snow that came during our stay was mad. Riding with powder up to our knees was fantastic and I even got stuck with snow up to my chest and had to crawl out! We also enjoyed an outdoor Onsen (hot spring), soaking our exhausted bodies in the boiling hot water while snow was floating down in our faces. Sara said it was the best snowboarding she had ever done and I am absolutely willing to agree.

Check out the pictures of all that fantastic snow and from the rest of the holiday in the photo album!