Jeff eats mini burger donut

The latest craze at Mister Donut...

Mini's, the burger was sweet like a donut, but oddly the fries were
more like real potato's? Weird.

Cute kids playing in the stream!

More of this beauty...

Utsubo Park

Trees??!

My yummy lunch today!

Could it be?

A wooded trail?! Well kind of...

Ben won these chuppa-chups!

The mug...

Jeff won for me. It was a particularly hard UFO catcher, so if you win
they take your picture and have you sign it. Ha!

Okinomiyaki

This is actually good, however my favorite is the front left-
modanyaki with soba noodles on top and jeff likes the front right- kim
chi style.
The Osaka okinomiyaki is in the back, which looks more traditional for
here.

Ben & very large chair!

Japanese garden.

The best store ever.

Well almost, it has just about everything we need, for cheap!
100 yen store = dollar store

Our delivery truck :)

Golden Week Adventure Video!!

Please enjoy our new video highlighting our Golden Week adventures! The video contains a visit to the Fushimi-Inari Taisha Shrine, a bike ride through Osaka to Sakai City, an Amazing Pet Show, and a visit to Shirahama, Wakayama, Japan.

Yes, we have been slackin'!

But the good news is we have action packed blog posts on their way! Here are the picture highlights from the Pet Show we went to over Golden Week as well as our trip to the beach town, Shirahama... Video highlights are up next!



who needs a dog pranny when you can look cooler like this?!


Leila and one of the cutest bunnies ever


double fistin'






how can you resist all this cuteness?!


my, what pretty eyes you have!


overwhelmed at the cat cafe




riddin' in style


I think they need to upgrade to the 3 dog pranny


shiba


On to Shirahama... a couple hours south by train, Shirahama is the sister beach to Waikiki- at least in July and August when this place is hot and packed with beach bathers. It was mellow and the skies were turning on us.. but we still enjoyed a sit on the beach, one of the oldest onsens recorded in Japans history, and some sights similar to the Oregon coast... kind of.


Beautiful imported sand from Australia- but of course!




where the hot stinky sulfur meets the sea...


The onsens are divided into men and women, so Jeff and I separated for an hour to relax in the hot as hell natural baths... with a view of the pacific ocean and waves splashing up, it was pretty nice!


Then onto some sightseeing down the coast... this didn't seem too impressive to us at the time, but this pic looks cool :) I think it's called Senjo-jiki or Thousand Tatami Mat Point.


And then this site- called Sandan-heki, Three Step Cliff, which was impressive and beautiful!




Jeff enjoys his 1st micro-brew in Japan- the verdict- not bad!


Shirahama beach nightscape


Stay tuned for the video!!!

My new 5000 yen used guitar

Thanks Mike! It's good to have an acoustic around the apartment.

Fushimi-Inari Shrine

We headed to Kyoto last week on a beautiful sunny day to hike and check out Fushimi-Inari Shrine. We went with friends Ben and Leila and had a great time wandering up the hill and back down... here's a map of the hike- which is mostly through orange Tori gates and on nice paths with stairs...



an illusion... or twin gates?




The kanji on each gate is a bussiness' name. They are donated by the business' as Inari is the God of bussiness and is worshiped for wealth.






us self portrait.


ancient moss :)


Faries could have lived here... but all we saw where frogs and quail...



see the full set of pics at morganpace.com !

Golden Week update: We rode our bikes here today...

We took a 12 mile (roundtrip) bike ride today to Sakai on our new bikes along with Ben and Leila. "Sakai is known for its keyhole-shaped burial mounds, or kofun, which date from the 5th century. -Wikipedia"
We had a great day!



-Image from Wikipedia


Check out the satellite view of where we went.