Archive for the 'Vacation' Category

August 13th, 2016

Japan 2016, part 0

I’m back from a 12 day trip in Japan! After almost two weeks, I’m behind on blogging, work, personal life – pretty much everything. I have a lot to talk about and photos to post from this trip, but I’ll be splitting it up into several entries, so that they’re easier to digest. I’ll spread them out this time too, so that I can stick other entries in between.

This was actually my second trip to Japan. Two years ago, I went to Tokyo, Kyoto, and Hakone, while also visiting nearby cities like Nara and Osaka. The Japan category on my blog has entries on those! This time, we stayed in Tokyo and Sendai, and we also visited nearby cities like Morioka, Shiogama, Matsushima, and Yokohama.

I normally don’t take vacation in the summer because it’s often crowded in places and really hot, but I wanted to hit the festival season in Japan. It also ended up coming at a good time. I was starting to really get tired out by work, and even blogging or updating my websites began feeling like a chore. Being away for two weeks was refreshing, and I’m ready to take on reality again.

In the mean time, I was updating my Instagram while in Japan, so you can kind of see a preview of what I was up to there. If you play Pokemon Go, I have a Facebook album with my thoughts on playing in Japan. Also, I went ahead and edited a bunch of food photos (cause they’re important, you know) and have queued them up on my food tumblr. (It’s set to post twice a day.)

I’m going to return blog comments and work on my first Japan entry soon! Here are some previews from my trip that you can expect a write-up on later 🙂

japan_16_preview_01

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15 · Posted in Japan, Vacation
December 23rd, 2015

Maui – part 3

This will be a long entry! Instead of dragging out my trip to two more entries, I’m fitting the last four days into one entry.

Day 5 – 11/11

We started the morning with snorkeling and decided to hit up three spots before lunch. The first and third weren’t that great, which were Makena Landing and Polo Beach. They didn’t have many interesting things to see, and the visibility in the water was a bit low.

However, the second stop was Ahihi Kinau Natural Area Reserve, and it was amazing. It was hard to get into the water since the beach was rocky, but once you’re in, it’s an easy swim with very clear water. There were sooo many fish here! There were even types of fish I had not seen in the other snorkel locations, especially the really big ones. This spot is a definite recommend!

After lunch, we took it easy. We did a short drive to Olowalu and back, stopping by a scenic overlook and the Kealia Boardwalk. At the boardwalk, I was able to take some nice photos of Central Maui 🙂

maui_2015_46

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10 · Posted in Hawaii, Vacation
December 13th, 2015

Maui – part 2

I wanted to cover 2-3 days every entry, but on day 4 (11/10), we did Road to Hana! We stopped by enough places that it deserved its own entry.

Our plans for day 4 were a bit more ambitious than we expected. Prior to our vacation, I looked up places to photograph in Maui and came across Iao Valley. It looked beautiful, so we started there in the morning.

maui_2015_28

It was beautiful indeed! It was also kind of misleading as I thought it was a hiking spot, but the path was paved and very short. After we went up to the lookout area, we came across this sign:

maui_2015_27_cropped

Yep. Phallic stone. Now I cannot unsee… well, uh, yeah.

So after that short stop, we started on the Road to Hana. In hindsight, we probably should have dedicated more time to it. The road is winding, and in some places, only narrow enough for one car, so it’s a very slow drive. It takes close to 2 hours to drive from Paia to Hana, and you also want to leave enough time to drive back before the sun sets.

However, the point of the Road to Hana isn’t actually to get to Hana. That’s just what the road leads to, and most recommend going past Hana. All of the stops along the way are actually why people make the journey, and it’s why it ends up taking many hours. There’s amazing views, waterfalls, and parks all along the way.

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10 · Posted in Hawaii, Vacation
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