After the holidays and the chaos of ski camp was over, the next big highlight that we looked forward to was a visit from Sean's sister, Jen. Jen currently teaches at a university Saudi Arabia and we always look forward to a visit from her during one of her breaks between courses. Having visitors is always such a fun excuse to plan activities that we might normally do and this trip was no exception. We kept Jen busy with quite the packed agenda of things to do both inside and outside of Tokyo - it was so much fun!
After she arrived, we hit up Shake Shack, a Western restaurant in the trendy part of Tokyo that we had been wanting to try for awhile and then on the next day (Friday), we left for a weekend ski trip to Shiga Kogen resort - the largest winter ski area in the whole of Japan. The weather was great for skiing and at night we enjoyed soaking in the hot pools (onsen) of the hotel along with a hot pot dinner. The next day we traded skiing for a tour to the snow monkey onsen park and then rode the bus back to Tokyo. On Monday we had a long and elaborate cooking class which involved first learning how to cut and prepare fish for sushi and then making a few different kinds of sushi. The class was topped off by eating the finished product and washing it down with homemade plum wine.
We took Tuesday completely off and recovered from the previous days' activities by hanging out at our neighborhood onsen before spending the evening with my Rotary host counselor for a sushi dinner and then a night of tea, dessert and karaoke. On Wednesday, Jen spoke in one of the undergraduate classes that I'm observing, which was a lot of fun - I was so excited about the chance for Japanese undergraduate students to learn from her experience living and working in the Middle East. We celebrated her last night with us by having fancy drinks at the New York Bar at the top of the Park Hyatt building in the center of the city. Jen, thanks for your up-for-anything attitude, your humor, your generosity and for bringing me a ton of new baking supplies! Please come and visit again so we can plan more fun things to do!
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