Let Liz Travel

For our first morning in Kyoto, I was hopeful to be able to try soufflé pancakes. These extra fluffy pancakes are a specialty of Japan I had read about and had been looking forward to trying. We found a restaurant nearby that seemed to offer them in additional to other brunch foods so we made…

During our introduction to Joki-in we were invited to attend the morning prayer and meditation. For that reason we all woke, bright and early, and shuffled in our slippers to the main hall. The main hall was a large room, divided into an open space, a seating area, and an altar. The head monk welcomes…

My aunt had let us know early in the trip planning that she wanted to do a temple stay while in Japan. As it was her particular wish, we left the planning to her. With only the name Koya-San and not much more than a section of the travel guide to go off of, we…

Following through on our devious plan to out smart the crowds, we woke early and met up for some breakfast at a nearby cafe. My partner was feeling worn out after the previous day’s excitement, so it was just my aunt and I who returned once more to Osaka castle. The atmosphere was more subdued,…

Our first day in Osaka started with breakfast at the hotel. For myself, I didn’t particularly enjoy the buffet. All of the food tasted like fish. It’s not a bad thing if you are in fact eating fish, but it’s not what you want if you signed up for chicken. It was a decent beginning…

We had gotten into a routine of 8 am wake ups and 11 am trains and this day followed the same pattern. What made this day distinct was that we would be traveling appointments 850 miles by two different Shinkansen trains over the space of about 8 hours. A full travel day. The train ride…

We were saying farewell to Sapporo and beginning to make our way south again. Osaka was our next destination but it was much too far to travel there all in one day so we decided to break up the travel and spend a day in Hakodate. It would be a rainy and gray day it…

While reading up about what to do in Hokkaido, we happened to see that there was a little town just on the outskirts of the city that had a very peculiar connection. Futomi, Japan was the sister city of Leksand, Sweden. The king had visited. The parks were named after Swedish cities. We needed to…

We had heard some suggestions of what to do while in Sapporo from my Japanese friends, mostly concerning food. Have the ramen, miso is the specialty. You must drink Sapporo beer, they serve a special recipe only available in Hokkaido. Yubari melon is a specialty. Fresh milk soft serve. The list goes on. We could…

This was looking like a stressful day. We had planned to travel to Sapporo on the north island of Japan and we would need to take 4 trains and countless stairs to make it there. The most exciting leg of the trip would be using the bullet train, or Shinkansen, from Tokyo up to Hakodate.…