I was trying to think cold thoughts to cool off during these hot summer days and that reminded me to write about our Christmas-time trip back to the US. It’s full of warm fuzzy memories though so it didn’t help with the heat.

Our first stop was Austin, TX to see the Handel family. We enjoyed catching up with everyone over a rousing game of Top Golf and an afternoon at the Austin Zoo among other activities.

Our second stop was the DMV where we did all sorts of fun things with all sorts of fun people. Photo evidence of some of the fun follows below, but sadly not all the fun was captured. It was so great to catch up with so many people!

Luckily, it didn’t take quite as many takes to get this photo as it did last year.

Our last stop was California where we got to see Jon’s Mom and his brother Jeff as well as partake of all Jon’s favorite childhood foods – Round Table Pizza and In n Out Burger and Noah’s Bagels.

More to come soon (maybe) on our latest shenanigans in Australia. Until then, stop being such a cotton headed ninny-muggins 🙂

We had a smooth trip from Singapore to Tokyo and Jon’s exceptional navigation skills had us at our Airbnb in no time. We met up with Mike and Jen there and our Japan adventure began.

A big part of any trip is food. For better or worse, you have to abandon your eating norms when away from home. Luckily, in Japan food was for the better with convenience store dumplings/buns always nicely filling in gaps between meals.

We ate noodles. Lots and lots of noodles. On our first night in Tokyo, Mike found a place that claimed to be the originator of Taiwan-Mazesoba though a quick check on the interwebs indicates it’s actually from Nagoya. Oh well, originator or not, this place made a delicious version of spicy pork, noodles and some other stuff. Yum! But, before we could eat, we had to decipher the ordering process which involved buying a ticket from a vending machine with everything written in Japanese. We received much needed aid from the proprietor, obtained our tickets, and then watched as the proprietor proceeded to shout the order to the cooks. I guess the machine was a handy way to collect money? Or confuse the odd tourist who managed to find this tiny restaurant on a side street in a non-touristy neighborhood? I sense a conspiracy.

Other noodable experiences included some standard ramen, cold ramen (ordered unintentionally based on a picture – whoops), and Korean ramen with kimchi.

We relied on Mike A LOT to find us good places to eat. Jon and I would happily either eat at the first place we came upon that didn’t look dodgy or walk around in circles trying to decide where to eat until we were both ready to eat our own arms at which point happily might not be the right word. We were in better hands with Mike around. One night in Kyoto Mike found us a near by Izakaya to eat at, but it proved so popular that they were booked out for the night. He persevered and found us another place that ended up having a note in the door about being closed for a break. He kept going and found us yet another too popular place. We’d all about given up when we happened upon a Japanese BBQ place. In order to avoid the aforementioned arm eating scenario we decided to go for it and we were rewarded. We had delicious BBQed meats and a lovely chat with the husband and wife duo running the place that resulted in a hand drawn map to the hole in the wall place where we enjoyed the Korean ramen mentioned above.

While staying in Kyoto, we decided to have a fancy dinner in nearby Osaka as an excuse to explore another city. Mike found a place that looked great and made a call to try to make a booking. Luckily the person at the restaurant spoke English. Unluckily this was one of many restaurants in Japan where they make it extra hard by requiring a hotel concierge or other official person to make a reservation for you if you are a foreigner. This is the result of people being rude, making reservations and not showing up, so it’s understandable, but still annoying. Back to luckily, Jon emailed our Airbnb host and they quickly replied and make a booking for us. Woo. We got to enjoy a fabulous meal that included the best tuna sashimi I think I’ve ever had and whale bacon. Sadly we have no photos of our fanciest meal due to the restaurant’s rules.

Other meal highlights include:

• Tempura which came with a helpful guide on how to properly eat it and led to a fun souvenir of wasabi salt.

• Okonomiyaki, Japanese cabbage pancakes which we made ourselves.

• Street food a plenty

The only meal no-so-highlight was breakfast. We had a few decent bites, but for the most part breakfast didn’t seem to be a thing or maybe it was just that we weren’t always up and at ’em in time for breakfast. Who knows.

Many thanks to Jen and Mike for actually taking pictures of food which I usually don’t think to do until I’ve already eaten.