When Katie came to town

I'm gonna skip over the excuses why it has taken so long to get some pics up here & following this visit I will be adding some from when my parents came almost a year ago.

Back in December Katie 1-80 came to visit which for me was a wonderfully special & of course fun time! Aside from the fact that I would return from work to a delicious meal ready to eat, that was followed up with fresh stewed apples, we had some fun catching up, hanging around, eating, drinking & of course singing. Things had cooled down considerably by the time Kate had arrived so the winter woollens were getting a workout & cold is definitely not Kate's favourite temperature but I think it was still ok???



On our first night we celebrated
with some beer & food at my favourite little izakaya, Daruma Tei.

The usual catching up activities took place....



This was followed by some warm sake which as you can tell KT really loved.

We spent the evening talking each other's ears off & I had a wonderful time hearing about Kate's recent travel adventures.

K8, Gem & Tash Karaoke & grafitti evening

We thought we'd just got for an hour or two but we stayed until we got kicked out after several jugs of beer & who knows how many songs.

Afterwards we thought it was a really good idea to write our names in the icy windows of the car parked at Family Mart conveni... next day we were feeling guilty & thinking that was not a Japanesy thing to do by any stretch of the imagination...

Ashiyu & food...

No visit to Okaya is complete without a visit to the ashiyu/foot onsen.

Or a visit to the Yaki Niku for some delicious meat, clams & of course beer & plum sake.

Maybe the last one is the Korean restaurant???

Sightseeing in the glorious weather

It was the last day to drive up to 高ボーチー (Takabochi) before the roads closed for Winter. There was a little snow at the top & some wind & it was, well it was freezing!!!

More Karaoke

In Tokyo it's common to stay out all night in a karaoke place & catch the first train home... In Okaya everything is only 10 minutes walk away so I've never done an all night karaoke until this night.

Kate & I had an early bus planned for the next morning but this didn't stop us staying out until after 5am. We set out late after I finished work & arrived around 10:30 & went to a local chain Izakaya that has a couple of rooms with karaoke as well.

We proceeded to eat, drink & sing for almost 7 hours... Gemma lost her voice for a week after the evening & Kate & I managed to get ourselves to Tokyo feeling the effects.