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August 31, 2005

Little Tokyo

Well it's fast approaching the end of our stay in New Zealand - we've been here for three and a half months and will be flying out on Friday morning. We've had quite a relaxing week; most of you will know by now that we have sold Colin (sorry guys, couldn't afford to send him home), so we've had about a week staying in a hostel to prepare for the next leg of our trip.

Next up is Japan where we will spend 2 weeks, followed by 2 weeks in China and then 3 weeks in Thailand where we will be travelling with "the kids" (Josie, James and Steve)!

Today we bought our Japan Rail vouchers for a weeks travel around Japan and we somehow managed to book ourselves into the pink-ist hotel we could find in Tokyo without realising, it's called the Sakura Hotel. The (very rough) plan is to spend the first couple of days in Tokyo, then we will head in the direction of Kyoto & Kansai where we will find a variety of ancient gardens, shrines and castles. We will also be heading to Nara to have a look at one of the world's largest Buddhas. On the way, we are hoping to get a good view of Mount Fuji and not actually climb it. After all this we will head down to Hiroshima, the site of the world's first nuclear bomb attack (note to parents: it is safe to visit)

The rest of our time will be spent in and around Tokyo where I am convinced we will find plenty to do. I wouldn't mind trying the following: staying in a Ryokan, bathing at an Onsen, obviously eating lots of Japanese food and maybe dining in a Ninja Restaurant (cheers Nige) ... any more suggestions?

Actually, any suggestions for China will also be very welcome!

Posted by deb at 07:42 AM | Comments (2)

August 27, 2005

27/08/2005-05:55:11

bye bye colin

Posted by robl at 05:55 AM | Comments (3)

August 21, 2005

21/08/2005-11:53:06

mmm ... kebab

Posted by robl at 11:53 AM | Comments (2)

August 10, 2005

10/08/2005-05:26:08

quack

Posted by robl at 05:26 AM | Comments (3)

August 05, 2005

05/08/2005-06:48:34

deb with her presents and colin with his too

Posted by robl at 06:48 AM | Comments (2)

Pipe Dreams

Firstly a big thanks to "The Kids" at home for the birthday presents - we finally arranged for our post to be forwarded to Wanaka and picked up the large package yesterday! The presents were so cool that we took photos of them for everyone to see! Even Colin got a present - fluffy dice... they really suit him!

I was a little worried about the T-shirts though. "The family" - i.e. Pikachu & Vince seem to be out of control in the lounge of our place, I thought Wheeler was supposed to be keeping an eye on them :) If anyone can shed some light on what else is going on in the photo, please let us know!

... and how did you know that I needed a new set of clothes... lovely tops, cheers guys. And my hair is loving the new shampoo & frizz-ease , can not normally afford such expenses :)

Thanks also to my Nan B for the letter, it was lovely to hear from you!

On the snowboarding front, this last week has been a very hectic one but we've both really enjoyed ourselves. Rob's snowboard camp started at 8:30 on the mountain which meant a very early start for the both of us to get up there in time. 3 hours half pipe riding in the morning followed by 2 hours private training in the afternoon.

I spent my time with a 2 hour lesson in the morning and practice in the afternoon for 3 days which was the best thing I ever did (snowboarding related anyway). I was taught to ride switch, to ollie, to manual (wheely), to ride boxes etc... and ironed out some of the bad habits I picked up from boarding without lessons for so long...

This week will be our last in Wanaka, in fact we are planning on leaving on Thursday for Christchurch so we can officially start selling Colin. We'll be sad to leave Wanaka... and sad to see Colin go too (although fingers crossed eh!)

[2 InThePost galleries here and here]

Posted by deb at 03:45 AM | Comments (6)