kenyehmoi

[kenyehmoi]

Couldn’t get enough of Ibiza.  Had such a fab time! 😍😍😍

[kenyehmoi]

Continuing my trend of being rubbish at taking photos when on holiday. smh

[kenyehmoi]

Definitely not an exotic location, but I do love a good first snowfall.  It’s always nice to get a good pic of it before it turns gross.

[kenyehmoi]

zoejoysoy replied to your photo “I turned 40 and went on an amazing holiday with a bunch of my friends...”

happy birthday!!!!

Thanks @zoejoysoy

[kenyehmoi]

I love beer.  I worked in brew pubs when I lived in Chicago and I die for IPAs.  When I was in Japan, I couldn’t really rock with the Asahi and what not but fortunately came across a bunch of awesome brew pubs that had dope beers.  I actually tried Los Muertos beer for the first time while living in Japan and was happy to find that they were out of Puerto Vallarta.  Our airbnb happened to be a 10 minute walk from Los Muertos Brewing brew pub, which made an already brilliant holiday that much sweeter. 🍺🍺🍺

[kenyehmoi]

[kenyehmoi]

In my “old age,” I’ve decided that I need to figure out how to live a life where I hang out on beaches, swim in the ocean and drink multi-coloured cocktails with my homies. 🍹🍹🍹

[kenyehmoi]

I turned 40 and went on an amazing holiday with a bunch of my friends to Mexico.  The whole trip was fantastic and beautiful. 😍😍😍

[kenyehmoi]

I spent the evening at Junkarc’s night market yesterday.  It was delightful and quaint.  This was their first time doing it at night and it was a success!  There was lots of lovely people, great food and drinks, nice goods for sale and an awesome fire performance by our friend Haru.  Good times. 

[kenyehmoi]

Juncarc Night Market

[kenyehmoi]

Utsunomiya

Utsunomiya is the capital of Tochigi Prefecture and is also famous for dumplings.  You can’t go there and not eat them!  

So we did exactly that.  

We went to two places for dinner, Masashi (正嗣) and Min Min (みん-みん）.

I have never eaten that many gyoza in one sitting in my life.  They were delish. Both places were on point, but if I was putting on my professional chef critiquing hat, I would say that the gyoza at Masashi were better than the ones at Min Min. Min Min’s sauce was way more fab though. 

[kenyehmoi]

Tōshō-gū

I hope this doesn’t make me sound like a horrible person but dang, it’s so easy to get shrined out.  I’ve seen so many shrines, and they are beautiful, but after a while I don’t even care if they are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, I just don’t feel like going.  I think I’ll leave the visiting up to the people that are uber interested in them.

That being said we didn’t do the trio in Nikko, we just went to Futarasan and then this is Toshogu.  

Toshogu really was quite exquisite.  I didn’t take that many pics and unfortunately it was under construction so we didn’t actually get to see all of the carvings and structures that its so famous for.  We also hit it closer to the end of the day and I wasn’t in the mood to climb the plethora of steep ass steps to see the different areas.  

What I did see though, I really loved. 💕

[kenyehmoi]

This was at Futarasan Shrine.  You write on a plate and then smash the plate while saying 悪霊退散, and it scares off the evil spirits.  I’m sorry I forgot what this in Japanese.  

I don’t think I have evil spirits lurking around me but I did it anyway, just in case.  😏

[kenyehmoi]

We totally took the swan paddle boat for a spin but the water was so choppy I was sure we were going to die.  The boat kept rocking so much and I was like we need to get back to shore with the quickness! 😁

[kenyehmoi]

A little waterfall action.

[kenyehmoi]

As the day went on, this thin layer of fog just sat above everything.  It was so beautiful.  I used to be a huge The Vampire Diaries fan and I imagine that this is what Mystic Falls looked like.  😂😂😂

[kenyehmoi]

Kegon Falls.