Japanese Christmas

You may recall last year's Christmas meal was a special box of goodies from good ol' Macku Donalds.  Well this year, we decided to up the ante and do it the way the real Japanese people do it.  That's right- we pre-ordered our KFC Christmas box by November 30th, as requested.  We figured this was our last Christmas here, so when in Rome...

A small box of fries and a big box of chicken- doesn't that just say Christmas to you?

Birthday Celebration

Today was another national holiday in Japan.  It seems like there is one every month.  Usually, we just sleep in and lazily enjoy the day, but today we got up before 8am.  Not only did we wake up early, but we actually went and stood in the cold for a few hours.  What could cause us to do such a thing?

A few others joined us this morning

Tokyo Motor Show

We went to the Tokyo Motor Show last weekend, along with over 800,000 other people.  It was the first time the event was actually IN Tokyo in years.  Recently, the show had been in a neighboring prefecture, making it much less accessible to Tokyo-ites.  It was also our first time to Tokyo Big Sight, a worthy venue for such an interesting show.

The grand entrance

I kind of hoped all the cars would be in those two upside-down pyramids, but alas- it seems this structure is just for show.  The good stuff was in the building behind.

Kyoto- the Food

As promised, here is a rundown of all the yummy eats from our recent trip to Kyoto.  Japanese food is always beautiful, but the food from Kyoto really is gorgeous.  I guess the traditional nature of Kyoto really shines through in the food. 
Besides the delicious bento we had on the train, the first treat of the trip was a small red bean-filled sweet and some green tea.  Who wouldn't enjoy this little treat while staring out into the nice garden?

The small sweet had a beautiful design and a small piece of gold leaf