Thanks Kaona,

It was a big whirlwind 2 week trip for my wife’s 30th birthday so it didn’t come out on the cheap end of the spectrum. There are a few videos on youtube but it’s only from the first 3 days or so. The rest I still have on a drive and haven’t edited down yet. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL452F1E049D06A4F8&feature=mh_lolz The pictures were on facebook but I need to find somewhere else to put them.

As for the trip it was first Tokyo. We stayed at the Park Tokyo Hotel which was right on top of the Shimabshi station. Then we visited Tsukiji Fish Market, Akihabara, the giant Gundam, the Imperial palace & Shibuya. We have an akita so we had to see the statue in Shibuya. Then took a shinkansen to Kyoto and stayed in a ryokan. There we did a walking tour, visited the Fushimi Inari Shrine, Golden & Silver Shrines, the food markets and a lot of walking around the city. Then over to Miyajima and the giant Torii gate and hiked up that mountain there. That was another traditional ryokan where they served you food in the room, it was a lot of fun. Then from there we took the train to Hiroshima and toured there for a day. That was right before the memorial date so it was pretty somber. Then to Osaka to fly to Hokkaido. In Hokkaido we took a small train from Sapporo to Furano to see the flower fields and small town Japan. Here we stayed in a ski lodge during the summer which is pretty odd. Then back to Sapporo for more walking around, over to the coastal town of Otaru and the Sapporo beer gardens! Another flight back to Tokyo to get our tourist shopping in and go to a Yomiuri Giants vs Yakult Swallows game and then we flew out the next morning.

So yeah really busy. If you have a trip-it account, you can see most of it here: http://www.tripit.com/trip/show/id/1955613

I couldn’t say there was anything I like the most since it was so busy and fun. I couldn’t sleep the plane ride over so I was kind of sick the first time we were in Tokyo. So I’d like to do all that part over again if I could. Plus being in Akihabara and not knowing the language well enough you only skim what you can see. Since we couldn’t read the signs we couldn’t tell what the upper floor stores were unless we went in them so I’m sure I missed a lot of great stores.

Another thing I would do was exercise a ton more before going over. We were walking at least 6 miles a day and sometimes those were hikes up mountains. It ended up where we didn’t do a lot of night life because we were up early to see as much as we could and then exhausted after dinner.