Black Eggs

Before I forget, I wanted to share a few pieces of information with you.  Our guide, Charlie, asked us if we knew why the cherry blossom trees are so beautiful, and it was because they don’t have any leaves with the blossom.  I never realized or thought of that, so I thought it was neat.  Just the flower for a week or two, and then they fall off and the leaves come in. Read more on “Day 5 – Hakone, and travel to Takayama” »

Panda at the zoo

The next day was our free day in Tokyo.  Marshall, Paola and I decided to brave the subway stations together (we figured getting lost in a group would be more comforting than getting lost alone).  The subways are really great here and very straightforward, so good news, we didn’t get lost.  We went to Ueno Park per the recommendation of Mike Roberts, and it had so many beautiful cherry blossoms hanging over the park walkway. At the end of the walkway, there was the zoo, and we saw pictures of the pandas, and wanted to see them, so we went in.  The zoo was really neat, and the pandas were so adorable! Read more on “Day 4 – Free day in Tokyo” »

Feeding fish at the Kiyosumi Garden

Well today on our scheduled itinerary, we were supposed to go to Kamakura, but there was a huge storm coming in, and our guide, Charlie, advised us that the trains often close down for these types of storms and he did not want us to get stuck (another group a while back had this happen to them and it took them over 5 hours to get back to the ryokan).  So we changed the itinerary to see a couple of museums and the Kiyosumi Gardens.  Read more on “Day 3 – Tour Tokyo” »

Today was a busy but fun-filled day!  We started the morning going to the Tsukiji Fish Market.  There were SO many  different fresh sea creatures for sale (some still alive).   All the workers were busy milling around, and it was fun to look around at all the different things.

To give you a little background, my husband and I already were in Taiwan for a week before we went to Japan (we were visiting my sister for her wedding).  This morning when we left for our flight, we arrived to the airport to find our flight was 5 hours delayed. As  we were flying into  Narita Airport,   it was so beautiful just to look our our plane window and see the shore as we were flying in.  We were able to go through customs just fine, and our Samurai Tours guide was there to meet us on the other side of the sliding doors exit, past baggage claim.  We met up with another c0uple on our tour, and then followed the guide to where he got us our train tickets.  Once we boarded the train, it was a smooth, fast 40 minute ride into the city.  When we got off the train, we were met by another guide, who hailed us a taxi that took us near our ryokan.  We were dropped off by the famous Karinarimon Gate. 

Read more on “Day 1 – Arriving in Tokyo” »

Have you ever wanted to go on a tour to Japan? Or have you already been on a tour, but would love to re-live the memories? Join us on the Late Cherry Blossom Tour though our very own Office Manager, Rachel Moore! Rachel and her husband will be traveling on our Best of Japan Fully Escorted tour this April, and will be blogging about their adventures! Read more on “Go On A Tour With Rachel Moore” »