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After all our traveling we got back home on the evening of the 30th. The next day was New Year's Eve but we didn't do anything special. New Year's Eve is a family holiday in Japan so there's really nothing to do unless you're visiting family. Neither one of us really cared about the holiday so we just relaxed at our apartments instead. I spent the evening in my apartment watching Kohaku Uta Gassen and either working on making videos for my blog or making a puzzle. I really can't remember for sure.

Kohaku Uta Gassen is a popular New Year's Eve music program. It's an interesting mix of pop and traditional music. Two teams, the red team (female) and the white team (male), perform songs and at the end a winner is declared. This year, the white team won. I think I enjoyed the female performances more though. But a lot of them were very similar... too many big girl groups. AKB48, NMB48, and SKE48 all performed. I really don't see a difference at all in those groups. 

I didn't go back to school until the 8th so I had quite a bit of free time. I spent time working on my blog, making my new Disney puzzle, and cooking a bit.

I made Bibimbap (a Korean dish) one night. It was rice topped with tofu, mushrooms, bean sprouts, carrot, boiled egg, and cucumbers. I mixed gochujang in, too. Yum! I got the recipe here.


One night I was wanting Colonel Crispy, the chicken strips from KFC here. But I was at Jonathan's for dinner and there's no KFC around there so we got konbini food. So I was excited to see Colonel Crispy flavored potato chips! Hahaha! They ended up being really good (and really did taste like Colonel Crispy) and I bought another bag later.

We had a three day weekend the 11th through the 13th. On Saturday we went to another Aeon mall in Hamamatsu that we hadn't visited before. We took a train and then walked to the mall, which was quite a long walk. I took a picture of these pretty flowers along the way. I'm still surprised by flowers in winter here.


The mall had a lot of the same stores as Ichino, the closer Aeon mall, and seemed a bit older, but it was still a really good mall. We ate dinner at an Indian restaurant which was really good. Also, the Kaldi store there had a bit more stuff than the other two I've been to I think.

Then the next night we went bowling at Round One. They had a deal where we could have unlimited games until 6 AM! We didn't stay that long, but we did bowl 11 games. It was so much fun! Oh, and I was one of the few girls there in pants. That's a weird thing about bowling in Japan. I would never go bowling in a skirt in America, but I have done it in Japan (just not that night).


That's a pudding cup I bought at the Max Valu grocery store near me. It was delicious! Chocolate pudding with a bunch of stuff on top and then more pudding on top of that!

The next weekend we ended up at Round One again. First we ate dinner at the mall though. We ate at Kobe Motomachi Doria. Jonathan had omurice (with mushrooms, I think) and I had eggplant doria. I wasn't sure what doria was exactly, but the picture looked delicious and I wanted to try it because doria is a food you can make in Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon. Yes, I partially chose my food based on a video game.


I was really excited when our food came because both of our dishes came in bowls with fire underneath of them. The food is really hot so they give you another bowl to dish it out into. It was soooo delicious. It was rice with cheese and eggplant and tomato sauce. Amazing! The only problem was that it didn't quite fill me up enough. They had sets with salad and maybe soup or something so next time I would get a set. But we just went to Mister Donut afterwards for dessert.

At Round One we did Spo-cha. I'm not sure what Spo-cha means. I'm guessing the "spo" part is for "sports" but I'm not sure about "cha." Sports challenge? Anyways, it's a couple floors of a bunch of activities. We paid for three hours, but we should have done the unlimited deal which was only a few hundred yen more. I just wasn't really sure at the time how long we would want to stay or if it really was unlimited.


There's so much to do! We played table tennis, basketball, and darts and did archery and batting cages. The batting cage was kind of scary at first, but then it was really fun! The also have an arcade and it's unlimited too! For about 1800 yen for three hours (2100 for unlimited) it's a really good deal!


 The automatic table tennis game is fun. It shoots balls at you and you try to hit the lit-up squares.


Just like Katniss! Ok... not really. I only hit the target a couple times, haha.

The next week over 900 elementary kids in Hamamatsu got food poisoning from the school lunch. Jonathan doesn't teach at any elementary schools, but all school lunches were canceled in Hamamatsu for a while. He had to take lunch to school and he hates cooking so I offered to make his lunches.

If I used a recipe, I'll highlight it and you can click on it to see the recipe.


The first day he had rice with some furikake mixed in, some green vegetables that he picked out at the grocery store, pineapple, tamagoyaki, some mixed vegetables (cabbage, carrots, and mushrooms) that I cooked with olive oil, a little bit of sesame oil, and red pepper.


This bento had the same mixed vegetables, cucumbers, spicy Korean tofu, and rice. I used the extra sauce from the tofu on the rice. 


Cucumbers, pineapple, cherry tomatoes, salad, pineapple, rice with spicy korean sauce, and tamagoyaki. 

 

Jonathan wanted curry so I did that. This wouldn't be a good cold bento, but he was able to microwave it at school. I used a premade curry packet but added in some extra eggplant.

Looking at all of these bentos is making me hungry! It's lunch time here so I will eat when I'm done with this post.


McDonald's here is having a "Vintage American" theme right now. It's kind of weird, lol. The honey mustard chicken sandwich was really tasty. I just ate the fries plain but it came with cheese sauce (Jonathan ate it but I didn't think it was good) and bacon bits. 

One day we went to LaLaport. I didn't buy one, but these fighting cat Gachapon toys are so cute!



We played basketball at the arcade and I beat Jonathan and finally made it to the third round! You advance to each round by reaching a certain score. It's only 30 points to make it the the second, which is easy, but then you need 150 points to make it to the 3rd round which is much more of a challenge. I finally did it! You need 250 to make it to the 4th round. I wasn't too far off! 

Krispy Kreme opened at LaLaport fairly recently. I got a chocolate raspberry jelly donut. I'm not a huge raspberry fan, and I don't usually like jelly donuts, but this was just so pretty and fancy looking! It did still sound good to me, but I would have gone with something else probably. But this ended up being super delicious. The jelly was really good and everything was yummy. I would buy this one again, but it was a limited time one so I probably won't even get the chance.


January was such a fun month! It made me really glad that I'm spending another year in Japan. I can't imagine leaving in March!

We had planned on staying in Tokyo for just one more day, but we ended up staying another day. It was actually Jonathan who wanted to stay more than I did. I still wasn't feeling 100% better and felt like I wouldn't get completely better until I rested at home, but I was well enough.

Once we went outside though and started walking around I felt really good and was glad that we had booked another hotel.

We spent the morning in Akihabara. It was such a pretty, sunny day! I don't like cold weather, but winter here isn't too bad and it's very sunny! The cold just mostly bothers me at school because there isn't heat and they leave the windows open because they think that prevents influenza. Ugh. If it wasn't for the freezing schools I would actually really like winter here! Well, it's not so great when riding my bike either.



We didn't eat at the hot dog restaurant. I just thought the statue was creepy.


I bought some ginger ale and thought that the bottle was cute. It made me think of Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony, hehe. :)

Next, we went to Harajuku (because I wanted to go to the K-pop store, haha). I didn't go in many other stores because Jonathan kind of hates Harajuku (at least the Takeshita street area, he's fine with Omotesando I think). We started getting hungry and decided to eat at a McDonald's we passed by on Omotesando. 


I got a chicken nugget Happy Set and some cheesy potato bites. The cheesy potato bites were just ok. I wouldn't get them again. I don't think they even have them anymore anyways.


This McDonald's was really big. I just looked it up and just found out that it's the largest McDonald's in Japan. It can seat 328 people.

There's a separate McCafe counter and they had some really good looking cakes and sweets that I've never seen at other McDonald's. They also had some different drinks, like the Hazelnut latte that Jonathan got.


So fancy for McDonald's! A real glass! A real spoon! And a cute design! It was also SUPER delicious. I kind of wanted one for myself but I was full and didn't need it right then.


We then went back to Akihabara to get our luggage from the hotel. I took this picture somewhere between the station and the hotel.

Then we headed towards our hotel near Yashio station, which is not actually in Tokyo. It's in Saitama. When we arrived it really didn't feel like Tokyo anymore. There was a small shopping mall near the hotel and it had a parking lot. It seemed like we could be somewhere in Hamamatsu or something.

After stopping in the mall to get some medicine (Jonathan had a headache) and playing basketball in the arcade, we went back into Tokyo to go to Ikebukuro. I wanted to buy some Converse shoes because I missed my pink ones that I left at home and knew a store there that had some cheap ones. Or at least they had good deals the last time I went. I'm not sure of the name of the store, but it's in Sunshine City.

Last time I had seen two pairs that I had liked. Pink ones and light teal ones with dinosaurs. The dinosaur ones hadn't been on sale though, but this time I saw them and they only had one pair left. When I picked them up, I saw that they were my size! Yay!!!!!! They were also on sale! Lucky!


Jonathan decided to buy a pair of Converse shoes too, but that store was just women's shoes so we went down the street to an ABC Mart. He bought a regular plain black pair.

I really like wearing my new shoes because they're more comfortable than dress shoes all the time and people don't really wear tennis shoes at the mall and stuff. These are good though.

We were hungry then and decided to check out TGI Friday's. I was amused by this sign while we waited for a table. Let's American Party!


When we got our table we were given English menus by out waitress who spoke English really well. It seriously felt like we were in America! The menu is pretty much identical to what you would expect in the US. I got a salad with chicken and it was tasty. :)
 

The restaurant was decorated with a lot of American movie posters. I thought it was cool that they had an English poster of Howl's Moving Castle, which is a Japanese movie.



It was so American-like! Even the ketchup and mustard were American! I guess that "Let's American Party" sign was pretty accurate! We even paid at the table (in Japan you usually receive a check at the table but you pay at a register at the front) and there was a 10% service charge added (tipping is not typical in Japan). It's kind of weird, but this was one of my favorite parts of our trip, haha! I'm so glad that we spent an extra night in Tokyo and went there.


I don't know what these decorations were for, but they were colorful. They were in Ikebukuro.

The next morning we headed towards Tokyo Station to put our luggage in lockers there. 



Yashio Station is kind of new and nice and has a cool stained glass window.


When we arrived at Tokyo station we left our luggage in the lockers in the basement near the Narita Express track. There are a ton of lockers there and usually a lot of empty ones. They were filling up though so I'm glad we got there when we did!

We went back to Akihabara and went to Yodobashi Camera again so that we could get a Play Station 3 for Jonathan and I could buy the puzzle that I wanted.



I made the puzzle during the last week of my Christmas break. It was a really super fun puzzle to work on! the plastic pieces were great and fit together so well. The colors look amazing too!


We also got some little camera keychains from a Gachapon machine. They're cute! Jonathan got one with a bigger lens.

We had time to do some more that day but we were tired and it was getting really crowded in Tokyo. It hadn't been so bad the other days, but it was obvious that a lot of people were starting to travel for the New Year holiday. That's why the lockers had been so full. So we took a bit of an earlier train than planned. We also got to the platform a bit early to wait in line so that we could get a seat. I'm glad because otherwise we would have had to stand for a while. The train was a bit busier than usual.

Overall, the trip was really fun! Being sick wasn't any good, but at least I was well for most of it!

On Christmas Eve Jonathan and I spent the day in Odaiba. 


We took the Yurikamome monorail which is one of my favorite trains. It's automated and there aren't any drivers so you can sit right up front and have a great view! We didn't take the first train available and we waited for the next one to be able to sit up front. It was worth waiting a few extra minutes!






We first went to Decks, a really interesting shopping mall. We played for a while in the vintage arcade. I played a crocodile game that Lauren and I played a long time ago (4th grade I think!) at Discovery Zone. We played it over and over again until we beat the high score. 


I didn't beat the high score, but it was fun!

Next I went to the store across from the arcade (such a fun store with lots of random stuff!) and was excited to see Sailor Moon merchandise. I thought the plushies were cute but up close the clothes looked really cheap (especially for 1200 yen) so I didn't get one. 


I did however get an organizing folder. I love how sparkly and super super cheesy it is!


 
I also got some cheap and cute candy.


At another nearby store I bought a neat magnet. Pancakes! Yummy!


I didn't notice the funny packaging until I got home. The Rilakkuma tape is adorable, too!


On that same floor I saw a cute display of miniature school lunch. It was outside of a restaurant where I think you can get lunches like Japanese school lunches. You even eat at desks! It looked really cute but kind of pointless for me when I eat school lunch on a regular basis anyways. If there was something like that in America though I would totally go and get some square pizza with cubed pepperonis.

 

I picked up some creepy glasses for free. 

After eating delicious Indian food, we walked around on the beach for a while. 




We made our way over to Dai San Daiba, No. 3 Battery. It had a nice view of the Fuji TV Building.



Some sort of cannon thing I guess?


The middle of the island was sunken down and kind of woodsy. We didn't feel like we were in Tokyo!


I saw several daffodils blooming. It seems so weird to see them December.



There was also a little bit of fall color left. There are daffodils blooming under that tree. Red leaves and daffodils... not what I'm used to seeing in winter!

When we returned to the main area, we ate Dippin' Dots. I had Chocolate Mont Blanc (a dessert made with chestnuts) flavor which was delicious.


Next we went to Venus Fort. We played basketball in the arcade a bit and saw a neat light display with "snow." 

 



The Christmas tree with Rainbow Bridge in the background was really pretty! The lights on the tree changed colors and sparkled.

Then we noticed lights on the Fuji TV Building. They flashed and changed with music. It was really impressive! Way better than the lights in Roppongi! I was surprised that I hadn't read about this illumination display online.



This video shows the awesome lights on the front of the building and the stairs. 




Later that evening we bought a small Christmas cake, which is a thing in Japan. I wanted a chocolate one but we didn't have much time to look for a small chocolate one so we got this at Vie de France. It had mixed fruit inside and was delicious. I am not sure why it came with candles though. Who is supposed to blow them out?

After quickly eating our cake we went to church. It was in English so that was really nice!



I saw this train on the way back to our hotel. I don't know who these characters are but they wished us a merry Christmas and happy new year.