japan one more time

Perfectly sized Nagoya A couple of our friends had questioned why we were visiting Nagoya and although I had done the research, I was starting to doubt the decision. It turns out Nagoya is perfectly sized city for the Ajayi's. It is quite possibly to walk to wherever you want to visit, or if not the subway is quite easy and not as large as Tokyo - meaning you don’t end up walking two kilometers underground! The five and half hour, Willer bus ride was lovely and relaxing. We had a grand view of a snow covered Mt Fuji, although the photos don’t do it justice. The countryside between Tokyo and Nagoya was very mountainous and we went through endless tunnels that run through the mountains. On the Willer again... Mt Fuji viewed from the bus, honestly. When we arrived in Nagoya it was snowing!! Very romantic but very bloody cold. We chose to stay in a hotel, this time. Although we enjoyed the Airbnb in Tokyo, we wanted a bit more ...

Tokyo Second Time Around Five days in Shimokitzawa So excited to be visiting Japan again. The Air Asia flight was painless. We came prepared (food, water, movies, own inflight kit) as usual. Even with no hassles, we were pretty tired when we finally reached Tokyo at 10pm. We landed ahead of schedule, did all the airport duties very quickly including changing money and locating the shuttle and arrived at our hotel, JAL City Haneda at 11pm. The hotel room was, as expected super small, but adequate. However, we couldn’t figure out the heating/air humidifier for the first few hours. Then just as we finall y drifted off, (5.30am by this time) a van with a loud speaker came down the road making some announcement. We looked out of the window to see people running down the road. As Taiwan had just experienced a biggish earthquake, we were a bit panicked. But it slowly dawned on us that people were just running for the train. No idea what the loud speaker was a...