Cherry Blossoms

Japan is famous for their cherry blossom trees; it's one of the first things you hear about when you move here, and they definitely don't disappoint! I didn't get to see any of the blossoms last year because of the evacuation after the earthquake, and I pretty much missed them this year as well being in Guam. However, I managed to get some good photos today before all the blossoms fell off. Enjoy! They are gorgeous!


















I saved these for last because they are my favorite. This tree is in our neighbor's yard and they are just amazing. Love them!

Guam

A.J. has been in Guam for the last 5 weeks and I spent my week off for spring break visiting him there. I was excited to get to Guam while we were living here, but I never expected to fall in love with it like I did. Enjoy the pics, they definitely do it justice! I hope to get back there again before we leave Japan...


View from our hotel room.








Doesn't get much better than this!








One of the historical site's in Guam. Two Lovers Point. Beautiful view!





Perfect sunset!




Overall, it was a great trip and we enjoyed the time that we got to spend together. It was the perfect break from school and a great spring break excursion!

Last Day of Sapporo

The last day of our snow festival tour was spent in the Sapporo TV tower and at one last site before we went to the airport. It was snowing pretty hard when we went up in the TV tower, so the pics are a little fuzzy.


Sapporo TV tower


View of the "Under the Sea" sculpture from the top of the TV tower. Pretty cool that we could see it and that our camera took a good pic of it.


The cartoon TV tower.

Our last stop before we got to the airport was the site of another ice festival. After a VERY scary drive up the side of a mountain in the snow, we got to this little village set right on a lake. It was getting dark, so the pictures of the lake didn't really turn out. Despite the scary drive and the cold, this was, by far, my favorite part of the trip. As we walked through this area, the only word I could come up with was magical. It was just amazing!












The inside of a few of the caves were completely covered in frozen evergreen. It smelled AMAZING!

Sapporo Snow Festival con't...

On the second day of our tour, we went to another site of the festival that had the large snow slides and snow rafting.





They were making little skis for kids to go down the small hills with. The man let A.J. help him.



There were also ice slides, but we didn't do those because we didn't want to get wet.
:-)



There were more sculptures there as well. This whole area was geared more towards kids, but the sculptures were so cute!


Hot tub!


Living room.


We also went to the site that had all the ice sculptures. They were all pretty cool!




Ice bar!






We also found Ramen Alley, a little "hallway" in between other buildings that is lined with Ramen shops.