Trip to Matsumoto

Last month our friends, Scott & Norma Aston, invited us on a little vacation with them. It was a perfect overnight trip up to Matsumoto City (about 2 hours away).

Matsumoto Castle and its moat.

Just being goofy...mostly because no one wanted to smile for another picture.

Matsumoto Castle grounds. What a beautiful place to take a picture...why wasn't anyone else doing it??? Maybe it had to do with the signs that were in Japanese around the perimeter of the grass :/ oops...shane was extremely embarrassed (because he could actually read the signs). Norma and I were taking the blame because we COULDN'T read them :0

Scott, Norma, our volunteer English tour guide, and us right after our tour. This guy did a great job explaining everything in the castle to us. It was very interesting.

Finding things in Matsumoto City to entertain the kids.

We heard about this Wasabi Farm that apparently is one of the biggest wasabi farms in Japan. We had lots of extra time left in the day, so we headed on over to check it out. We laughed the entire time because none of us even like wasabi and here we were touring a farm of wasabi plants. The funny thing was...there were lots of people there. Maybe they were all there for the wasabi ice cream...which ended up not being too bad.

Underneath those black nets are the wasabi plants. They are soaked in running water that is freezing cold (at least it felt freezing cold).

We don't know who this is, but we named her "Princess Wasabi" :)

I'm not a huge fan of my kids jumping on their beds at home so about a year ago I told my kids they could only jump on hotel beds (thanks Michele E. for that advice). I thought they would forget, but EVERY TIME we stay in a hotel room that is the FIRST thing they do.

Here they are wearing their Yukata's (Japanese robes) right before we went to the Japanese hot spring...oh how we love those!

Thanks Scott and Norma for a fabulous day! It was so fun laughing with you guys. At the end of the night Jayden turned to us and said "I really like Scott & Norma...they are fun!" We love you guys!