travelling allrite

That wasabi in a tube at home probably isn't wasabi, but European horseradish and green colouring. How disappointing! I have had the real stuff before, grated at the table, but I never realised how hard it is to grow . Sadly, none of this knowledge was gained by visiting the Daio Wasabi Farm at Hotaka due to a distinct lack of English information. We still had an interesting time. The farm is a few hours away from Shinjuku via the Chuo Line. We had to get up early but then face the fact that it was raining. Yesterday would have been nicer! Plus it meant that we wouldn't see Mount Fuji out of the window of the train. As it was, we barely made the train with B needing to hurry back to get jumpers. No breakfast either, so we were reliant on snacks purchased from the trolley. Still some gorgeous mountain scenery out of the window though. At Matsumoto we had to quickly change trains to the Resort Furusato, a luxurious two car diesel electric hybrid with ceiling scr...

We slept in. It was nice, but it reduced the time available for us to explore. With various options outside of Tokyo now gone we settled on taking Alex to Odaiba. I really wish that the Tokyo Teleport was real and not just the name of a train station. Yes, I talk about teleporting to Japan. Previous visits to Odaiba consisted of trips to Venus Fort. This time we turned the other way towards Aqua City. Alex spotted the Legoland Discovery Centre sign and excitedly demanded to go there. Okay, that was our plan anyway! Google was correct in noting that it was a quiet time in Legoland. There was no queue to get in and the "crowds" were small. It isn't a full amusement park like Legoland Malaysia; there were just two rides. But Alex had fun building and testing a Lego racer and a train. We all admired the selected sites of Tokyo in Lego, including Godzilla, a colourful Shibuya with television screens and moving Lego sumo wrestlers in a stadium. ...

When in another country it's important to try the local cuisine. But sometimes it's hard. I love a Malaysian breakfast, but Japan... It depends. Fortunately Funofushi Onsen's breakfast was served as a buffet. So I could leave the slimy brown guts (I'm guessing) and select dishes such as grilled fish, miso soup and salad instead. Alex devoured five croissants with strawberry jam and umpteen cherry tomatoes. Then what better thing to do than to take a hot bath. We entered the second indoor bathhouse area. There was a standard hot bath, one with bubbles and a rather slimy and dirty rotemburo overlooking the sea. And a hot sauna. Both of us used the cold plunge pool as well to reset our bodies. Check out was at ten, an hour before our transport back up to Wespa Tsubakiyama station. So we took a walk down to the rocky coast, eroded conglomerates of igneous and sedimentary rock. We spotted crabs and shellfish and one pool must have been freshwater with mosquito...