Scotland Trip – Christmas and New Year Part 3 (New Year in Edinburgh and Glasgow)

So my time in Shetland over Christmas was short but lovely  and it was time to change location  to central Scotland for Hogmanay (New Year) . Most of my extended family live in Glasgow so I really wanted to see them this trip as well as celebrate the New Year in Edinburgh with friends. Hannah and I flew down to Glasgow and spent a few days there shopping, seeing family and having proper Hannah-Emily-twin time.

Twin time involves going to cafes and eating cake. If you can get yourself a twin, I highly recommend it.

Then it was through to Edinburgh for the Hogmanay street party and concert in the gardens (Primal Scream) . Hannah R. was lovely  enough to host us and it was good to ring in the New Year with some of my best friends, dancing, singing and trying not to fall over and slide down the muddy bank than was the Princes Street Gardens.

Two of my favourite people!

Concert in the Gardens with the Edinburgh Castle behind.

Watching the fireworks over the Castle

It didn't start raining until after midnight! Result!

A great time was had by all. The next morning (despite a ten minute panic after some unnamed person *cough*Hannah*cough* deleted our bus reservation) we were sent on our way back to Glasgow after a lovely Scottish breakfast from Hannah R.

Yum yum

Our last few days were once again met with hurricane winds but thankfully we still managed to fit in seeing more of the family. Finally my stay ended with a night being fed and looked after by my lovely Grandparents. What else could a girl want?

P.S. The trip home was nowhere near as exciting as the trip to Scotland so it doesn’t really need its own post. I bought another bottle of the perfume I lost on the incoming journey, slept, watched movies, ate BA out of the shortbread in their snack bar and read a lot. Hopefully all my future journeys will be as uneventful.

Scotland Trip – Christmas and New Year Part 2 (Christmas in Shetland)

So I got back to Shetland late on the 23rd and basically went to bed straight away!   The 24th was my day for seeing lots of Shetland friends or actually just friends whose parents live in Shetland these days! I don’t have photos of everyone since I decided it was more important to have fun this holiday rather than take pictures but I managed to meet up with 3 different groups of people on the 24th (lunch, afternoon coffee, evening coffee). It was really good to basically pick up where I had left off when I moved away. You know you are good friends with people when you don’t see each other for years and things are exactly the same when you meet up again. I also managed to fit in some last minute Christmas shopping including  buying things Hannah pointed out that she liked without her realising while she was in the shop. Many thanks to Hannah R. and Kirsten for helping me to be super sneaky and surprise Hannah a lot the next morning!

Meeting up with old friends!

Christmas day was spent with just the family (me, Hannah, Mum and Dad). This was our first Christmas together in a long time because I didn’t go home for Christmas last year (I went to see family in Sydney instead) and Hannah was living in New Zealand the year before so she also made a Sydney trip. It was nice to spend time together as  a family and this year I didn’t even have to do any cooking!

Chefs working hard in the kitchen

Supreme Master of Desserts

I was demoted to laying the table

 

Christmas Dinner

The rest of the time in Shetland was spent relaxing, spending time with family and friends and clearing lots of junk out of my room. I didn’t manage to go through my stuff before I moved to Japan so I took the time when I was back to get rid of a lot of junk. Going through my clothes was almost like having a mini shopping trip as I found a lot of clothes that I don’t understand why I didn’t take to Japan in the first place!

We had a lovely hurricane force gale on Christmas day and the weather was pretty bad for the rest of my time home so I didn’t get much of a chance to walk about or do much outside. I was a bit worried about not getting off Shetland but the day I left was actually the nicest weather of my whole time there!

View from the house on my last day

 

Scotland Trip – Christmas and New Year Part 1 (the trip home)

This post has been a long time coming! Coming back after the holidays it was straight into stress mode for me as we had the SDC (Skills Development Conference, also called ALT Mid Year Conference) and the teacher I was supposed to be making a presentation with spent most of the two weeks before the conference off sick. Panic. Thankfully it went ok. If I had been a bit more together I would have asked someone to take some pictures since it was my first time presenting but I forgot.

Anyway back to the point! Back to Scotland. As with last year we had a 3-day English event at the end of term so I couldn’t take off any earlier than the 23rd. However I was determined that I would get back well before Christmas. So I planned an EPICLY long trip home which went something like this

22nd Dec – Show work supervisor my train tickets and be informed I’ve only bought half a ticket. You need a line ticket and a seat ticket. I bought my tickets online and apparently there was a little tick box for getting a line ticket (that I missed due to it all being in Japanese). So I only have a seat ticket. Great. Panic.

- During last day of the English event get called out of class as my elementary school has called wanting to know why I’m not there. Panic. Insist I told them I wouldn’t be coming months ago. Insist they understood as I watched the supervisor there tell the staff I was supposed to teach with that I wouldn’t be able to come. School teachers try to make me feel guilty. Put on air of self-righteousness and continue teaching.

- Bus home after work  (35 mins) and grab bag. Panic about half ticket.

- Subway to Sendai Station (15 mins).

- Super long queue at the ticket desk. Panic. Luckily it moves very fast. Buy other half of ticket. Buy bento (packed dinner) from the station to eat on the train. Try to calm down. Buy big bottle of water.

- Shinkansen Sendai Station – Tokyo Station (2 hours). Eat yummy bento. Spend most of the journey holding big bottle of water since I dropped the cap down the side of the seat. Only retrieve cap 2 mins before the end of the journey when the man sitting next to me leaves and I can crawl under our seats to get it.

- Start looking for bus stop at Tokyo Station. Warned that finding a bus at Tokyo Station is practically impossible. Find bus stop within 15 mins leaving 45mins left to stand in the 0C weather waiting for the bus. Ticket man insists I sit on his little crate next to his portable heater to stay warm until the bus comes. Fall in love with Ticket man a little bit.

-  Bus Tokyo Station to Haneda Aiport  (1 hour)

- Arrive around 10pm. Can’t check-in until 4am. Wander around. Try to use free wifi. Fail. Pay for internet. Eat. Sleep on benches (many people doing the same). Watch planes from the outdoor observation deck.

Watching planes

Plane spotting

Christmas tree at Haneda (also my broken camera!! - black spot next to the tree)

- 4am check-in. Ask to have bag checked all the way through to Aberdeen as both flights are BA. Give them my paper with all my flight details. Am told they will check the bag all the way to Shetland even though my last flight is not with BA (remember this for later!). Also upgraded to economy plus. Yeay! Buy new perfume in duty free. It’s put in a plastic bag to go through security in the UK.

- Tokyo Haneda – London Heathrow ( around 12 hours). Economy plus is very comfy. Japanese lady next to me sleeps the entire flight and doesn’t even get up once. Sleep a lot due to very little sleep in Haneda. Don’t watch any movies, only TV shows as I only stay awake long enough to eat a meal and go back to sleep.

- 2 hours in London. Buy magazines. Use wifi. Memory a little hazy of this point.

-Heathrow to Aberdeen (1 hour). Sleep.

- 3 hours in Aberdeen. Flights to Scasta are cancelled. Panic a little. Read.

- Aberdeen to Shetland (1 hour). Cause alert because my bag isn’t on the system. Ground crew insist bag causing alert belongs to another man up from Heathrow. See ground crew holding my bag. Inform them it’s my bag. Get told to sit back down and other man asked to identify bag. It’s not his.  Am told it is my bag. Think that should be obvious when I just told them that.

-Arrive in Shetland to lovely sign and hugs. Yeay. Realise along the way I left new perfume at security somewhere. Boo.

Airport sign

- Car ride Sumburgh to home ( 1 hour).

- Home to another sign and bed.

Happy to be home!

Happy New Year! 2012!

Click the picture to watch video

Project 365 – Day 360

Night view of Osaka from the top of the Umeda Sky Tower

Project 365 – Day 359

Going through the bamboo grove at Arashiyama, Kyoto

Project 365 – Day 358

Going through lots of gates at Fushimi-Inari

Project 365 – Day 357

With CatMac at the Golden Pavillion in Kyoto!

Project 365 – Day 338

Today was my last day in Tokyo. I caught the bus back to Sendai at 5pm. Mum, Hannah and I went to the Senso-ji Temple in Asakusa and had lunch with my friend Boon who is currently living in Tokyo. We got fortunes at the temple:

Some people got bad fortunes

Others got, and I quote, 'the best fortune!!'

Project 365 – Day 337

 

The main gate at the Meiji Jingu Shrine

The Shrine itself

So on Sunday morning we set off for the Meiji Jingu (Meiji Shrine) which is one of the main Shinto shrines in Tokyo. We left this shrine for Sunday as I’d read online that this is when weddings are held. A new wedding party came out of the shrine every 15 minutes so we were able to see some of the lovely traditional clothes.

The priests in front with the bride and groom being shaded by the umbrella (it was very hot!)

Two 'Miko' ( or 'shrine maiden') followed by the groom, bride and bride's mother

After this morning of culture we headed out to Tokyo Disney. We had tickets to see the Cirque du Soleil show ‘Zed’ which has a theatre near Tokyo Disney.  This is a kind of circus with trapeze  artists, clowns, jugglers, acrobats, etc. It was amazing! Now I want to see all their other shows! The show finished just before 6pm and I bought us evening tickets to Disneyland as a surprise. Since we were right next door it seemed a shame not to go! The park was packed with people and most big rides had queues of about 2 hours (and all the fast pass tickets were already gone!) but we were very lucky: on our first ride (Space Mountain) a lady gave us 3 fast passes (!!), on our second ride (Big Thunder Mountain) the 2 hour wait time only took an hour (yeay!), on our third ride (Splash Mountain) we discovered there was a very well hidden ‘single riders’ queue so our wait time was about 5 minutes and our last ride (Pirates of the Caribbean) had no wait at all as we jumped on it just as the park was closing. All in all: 4 hours in the park, 4 rides, lots of popcorn, many cute things bought. Great day!

Me on Splash Mountain. You can see I'm doing the same pose as 3 Japanese girls. We chatted through out the ride (in Japanese!!) and they were very happy that I would pose with them.