Christmas in Japan with a special guest...

Ten days out of my two weeks of Christmas vacation I spent galavanting around Japan with my traveling side-kick for these adventures - my mom!  And I'd say we did rather well, we hit up most of the top touristy sites in our ten days of world wind travel.  My mom arrived in Nagoya late and in order to make the most of our 10 days we left bright and early the next morning to head towards Tokyo Disney.  What a great sport she was leaving so early after she had just arrived only a few hours before :)  I'll let pictures help explain the rest of our adventures together...

Day 1 - Tokyo Disney!

Day 2 - Exploring Tokyo

Entering the area where the Meiji Shrine is located

Ritual hand cleansing before entering the shrine

On the Shinkansen (bullet train) headed towards Hiroshima

Day 3 - Hiroshima

Famous Torii Gate

There are deer roaming all over this island

Where the bomb dropped in 1945

Day 4 - Back to Nagoya, to explore my neighborhood

Mom's first sushi (please ignore the very wrong way she is holding her chopsticks)

A visit to my classroom

A few days later, after resting and exploring the Nagoya area we took another day trip to Kyoto...

A long path and many stairs of the Fushimi Shrine in Kyoto - amazing how many orange torii gates there were!!!

We also visited the Golden Pavilion Temple and other famous areas in Kyoto, but it won't let me upload anymore photos, sorry!  And that pretty much concludes the duration of our Christmas together in Nagoya.   It was fun to be able to share a little bit of my life here in Japan with my mom.  I don't think she ever expected to travel so many places around the world, how lucky she is to have me to go visit all over the world :)  Thanks for coming mom!