Hawaii.... Baby!!!

I am in the United lounge writing this as I am bored.. Gra is reading the paper on his laptop and the kids are watching "Friends" on Mia's laptop so I thought, hey why not use my laptop... (OMG what is this world coming to) :-) Anyway just a quick one as I am looking out the window at a beautiful red sky with the sun setting over Narita airport and I feel as if we are leaving for good and actually have tears in my eyes... not sure we are ready to leave yet... but I am DEFINITELY ready for Hawaii... Baby :-)

7th Visitors - Pen & Joel - Cancelled :-(

We are all very sad that Pen & Joel were not able to leave Switzerland (because of the volcano in Iceland) and visit. We had meals planned, bike rides, Karaoke, museums, galleries and a night out at Abbey Road for Pen's 40th.... We are hoping she will re-book and visit us in June.

Miss you and hope to see you soon xxx

6th Visitors Alan and Pat 8th - 16th April 2010

Our 6th visitors were Alan and Pat from the UK. They arrived on the Thursday afternoon (Iva and Philippe had left for Kyoto on the Wednesday). Arriving from a short break in Hong Kong they didn't really have the same jet lag as previous visitors but they had had a long day they were pretty tired. Quick crepe at the local French place near us and then early night.

We had a great time with them, visited the normal "tourist" places and also just sent them off on their own a lot with our phone number just in case they got lost. They did pretty well and hopefully enjoyed tokyo they seemed to find some nice places for a relaxing glass of wine or 2 :-). We also took them to Odiba for the day (one of the dry days), which is always nice as it is a little way out of the center and has a beach so feels nice to get away from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo life.

Monday was another horrible day weather wise so we thought we could go to some local museums for the day, lovely.... NOT!! All closed on a Monday... bugger! Oh well we went and did some shopping instead and nice lunch. :-) They were also with us to see Robert Cray which was great. Tuesday they headed off to Kyoto for 2 days, came back on Mia's birthday and came with us to the Teppan Yaki restaurant for a fab meal... hummm seems all we did was eat!! :-) They loved Kyoto and stayed in a great hotel, enjoyed the temples etc and the weather was nice, result!

They were due to leave Friday morning but Thursday night we heard about the volcano in Iceland, after looking into it a bit more realised pretty quickly that their flight had been cancelled. :-( They decided the best thing would be to go the airport anyway and see what could be done. Not alot!! They left yesterday (19th April) for Singapore as Pat's sister lives there but have been told that 1st flight they can get on back to the UK is the 1st May... for the moment!!

Hope you can get home soon, thanks for the visit, great to see you both, next time Vegas!!

Robert Cray 12th April 2010

Graham organised for 8 of us (Gra and I, Cecila and Kevin, Iva and Philippe and Alan and Pat) to go to see Robert Cray at the Blue Note Club - Tokyo.

We arrived at 8pm to pick the tickets up, it is a really modern place, I liked it!!! We had a drink outside first and then about 8:50pm we went into the club and found our seats. We had two booths so we had a Boys one and a Girls one. :-) I am sure we had the best seats in the house, directly in front of the stage and raised a bit so we were looking over every ones heads. Excellent!

I think there were about 100 people there so a really small venue which made it even better, felt he was singing directly to you.

We also had a meal there which was the first time I had every eaten a full meal at a concert but hey there is a 1st for everything and the food was really delicious so no complaints there.

I guess he was on stage for 1.5 hours, played some really impressive guitar, talked to the audience, had fun, the other band members too. Must admit the drummer and keyboard player looked quite old and a little out of place as Robert Cray and the Bass player were cool dudes BUT the drummer and keyboard player were excellent musicians and they all worked really well together so that is just me....

Had a GREAT evening!! Yummy food, champagne, great music and perfect company :-)

5th Visitors - CH Iva and Philippe 3rd - 13th April 2010

Iva and Philippe arrived bright and early on the 3rd (Saturday). It was so lovely to see them both again. We took the train back to Tokyo, dropped their bags off, had a cup of tea and then straight out to see the sites. We first took them to Meguro to see the beautiful Sakura (cherry blossom), we hadn't been there before either and it really was a lovely sight, lots of Sakura and lots of Japanese Sakura parties going on too. (this is where they put down blue plastic, and eat lots of yummy food and drink lots of beer and sake, looked like fun). Saturday night we met up with an old friend of ours and had a lovely meal (I will make that into another blog item). By the end of the night poor Philippe was so tired he could hardly keep his eves open, cant say I blamed him, it had been a long day.

Sunday we took them over to Harajuku, Omotesando, Shibuya. Monday, Asakusa and Ginza, and Tuesday they did a bike tour with our lovely friend Yukiko san. Unfortunately Philippe caught a cold and wasn't on top form but he did really well just a few early nights needed. Wednesday they left on a tour, Mt Fuji, Kyoto, Nara.... at this point I think poor Iva got a cold too :-(

Our new guests arrived on the Thursday so when Iva and Philippe returned on the Saturday to Tokyo they booked into a hotel (very nice I was told, but was it as good as Hotel Cunningham??) :-) I think Iva was quite sick so they took it easy and had a few days shopping in this great city. However Iva totally agreed with me on the "anyone over 5ft and bigger than a size 0 is fat over here"... very hard to find clothes and shoes when you are a typical westerner. (there is always bag shopping though) ;-)

Monday it rained, and rained and rained... and it was freezing... not good. But in the evening we met at the Blue Note Club and had a great evening with friends watching Robert Cray!! wow he was great!! Hopefully a great ending to the Tokyo experience.

See you in 3 months Iva... xx