Morocco was our last trip before our son Cody was born on November 29, 2017. In March of 2018 we took a big family trip to Japan and Taiwan with Jonathan’s family making for a large entourage for parts of the trip. Jonathan’s brother and his family as well as his parents joined us for different parts of the trip. We had two main goals for this trip. The first, was to expose our little ones to more travel abroad. This would be Cody’s first trip and Riley’s second. The second reason, was to expose Jonathan’s parents to a different type of travel and also show them around one of our favorite countries, Japan. And of course, we also wanted to eat lots of delicious food! This is where we first discovered gyu katsu, a fairly new dish in Japan. lightly fried beed cutlet that you cook to your liking on a hot stone plate.
March 22 - 24, 2018
We joined the rest of our group by flying into Osaka. They had already been in Tokyo for a few days prior to our arrival. After a delayed flight and arriving at the AirBNB very late, we woke up early the following morning in an effort to claim tickets for a sumo match at the Edion Arena in Osaka. There are always a certain number of tickets available first come first served for these sumo matches so we arrived early and waited patiently in line and luckily were admitted. After purchasing our tickets we went to have breakfast and bought some food to take into the arena with us. This was our first time watching an actual sumo tournament inside of an arena. Previously, we had seen a ceremonial tournament in Tokyo, but seeing it in an arena was a different experience that I would say is definitely worthwhile if you get the chance. I think its easy to think of sumo wrestlers as just big fat men, but in reality their agility, strength and flexibility is extremely impressive.
Since it was Jonathan’s parent’s first time to Japan we also took in some of the major sights, like Osaka Castle.
We did a day trip to Ikeda to the Cup O’ Noodles Museum where you’re able to see the history of the dried noodles and also make your own custom Cup O’Noodles.
