Happy New Year

What are your New Year's resolutions this year? I was reading an article on stuff yesterday that says more than half of Brits who make resolutions will give them up within 6 months. So I'm going to beat them all and forego the resolution making altogether this year. Easy.

Mike and I arrived back in Tokyo yesterday after two weeks away. Thailand was relaxing but not quite as sunny as we'd hoped. Admittedly it is their rainy season right now and we didn't get any rain, so perhaps we should just be thankful for that rather than moaning about the lack of sun. Still, it was great fun sitting round reading books all day and playing backgammon, eating thai food and drinking Chang. While on Samui Mike spoiled me with an early Christmas present - a half day "Sweetheart Together" spa treatment at Bandara Resort which was AMAZING.

Back in Japan for Christmas and we had a nice quiet one at home. Slept late following our overnight flight home (possibly the first and last Christmas I have ever slept more than 12 hours) and enjoyed a cooked champagne brunch followed by roast lamb for Christmas dinner without feeling at all guilty about not going outside because it's WINTER.

On Boxing Day we were up early again and off to Kyoto. We took the Shinkansen down there and arrived just before lunch time which gave us the afternoon to check out Gion and Ponto-cho. In the rain. We stopped in at Starbucks after 4 or so hours of walking and I was really disappointed to find they had already stopped serving their special "Christmas" drinks - no more toffee nut lattes for me until next Christmas then!

Fortunately we had pretty good weather for the rest of the trip, although it was a lot colder than Tokyo has been. We arrived back in Tokes late yesterday arvo, after a bit of drama with our return train tickets we managed to get back in one piece and even lasted until midnight to pop open a bottle of bubbles and welcome in the New Year.

Mike's back at work tomorrow so I'll be getting the place organised and sorting out our holiday photos before I go back to work myself next week. I'm looking forward to sleeping in and having some home-cooked dinners! On tonight's menu is thai red curry ....