September 2022 recap - Shizuoka mini road trip, DisneySea and parent visit

Whew! September passed more quickly than I thought, and I'm already two weeks late into October with this blog post. We've been keeping busy, and I'm happy for it, but unfortunately have been falling behind here. 

Shizuoka mini road trip

For the first weekend of the month, we did a Shizuoka mini-road trip with stops in Hakone, Numazu, Mishima and Hamamatsu [blog post here]. The weather preceding the weekend and forecasted through it seemed like thunderstorms, but magically we had clear skies. Unfortunately it was cloudy around Fuji, so no great views of that, but otherwise, it could be considered great weather, despite being a bit hot/humid.

If you used to enjoy my "Japan trip" blog posts, this was the most similar type of post I've done to that in a while...minus all the Liz Lisa shopping lol. If you're interested in some cool (in my opinion haha) activities, in this area, please take a look! We had a really great weekend with a lot of fun and new experiences.

DisneySea Halloween

We also did a 1-day visit to Tokyo DisneySea on September 20 because we wanted to check it out for Halloween (having previously visited during Christmas and spring themes). As our luck would have it, this day was very rainy (typhoon weather for southern Japan), which meant low crowds but obviously junk weather [blog post here].

Even though this was my fifth visit to DisneySea, I was still able to try some new things like eating at one of the fancier sit down restaurants and try the new Soaring: Fantastic Flight ride! Nothing was particularly picturesque, but we go to easy go on all of the attractions we wanted with standby wait times all under 1 hour! This was also our first time using the Tokyo Disney Resort app for entry times, etc.

Parent visit

My parents were able to get family member visas and had booked travel for 1 week at the end of September/first few days of October. This was all settled before Japan had announced the reopening for tourists in mid-October, and they already had the visas, so we kept all the travel plans. 

I am working on a separate blog posts for the activities we did, but it's quite a bit to sort through. [Published now!] We did a bunch of stuff from Yokohama and Tokyo to Saitama and Miura and I'm excited to share more about it when I can dedicate some time to it.

What we ate

Due to all the traveling around we did, actually a decent variety of food and snacks to share this month! If there was a longer blog post related to it, I linked it below the photo.

Chopchae from 路地裏食堂 とんデジ

Shake Shack (Gotemba)

Guesthouse Inoue breakfast (Hamamatsu)

Meat & Beer Festival gets (Mishima)

Melon from Izu Fruits Park (Mishima)

301餃子 (Mishima)

Umai ramen and tonkotsu ramen from Shofuku Ramen (Numazu)

Watermelon dango and soft serve w/mochi & caramel (Hakone)

Takiyaryo gets (Hamamatsu)

Ebi gyoza, ramen, half size fried rice and spicy miso ramen from ラーメン縁

BBQ House Anan x2 (once for lunch, once with friends for dinner)

menchi katsu teishoku with ebi katsu and crab cream croquette & tonkatsu curry from Tontetsu

Pizza-la Bulgogi, Margherita and Spicy Sausage pizza from Pizza-La 

Miso ramen and gyoza from Bamiyan

Sausage roll and classic glazed donut from the Little BAKERY (Tokyo)

iekei style ramen and massaman curry & green curry from Ramen Kz

Nigiri-itcho

DisneySea foods (Tokyo DisneySea)

Kuma-chan onsen (Shibuya, Tokyo)

Chocolate banana parfait and grape trifle from Takano Fruits Parlor (Shinjuku, Tokyo)

Assorted sushi from Sushizanmai (Tokyo)

Assorted sushi from Toyosu Fish Market (Tokyo)

Tsukesoba, miso ramen and tonkotsu ramen from 札幌海老麺舎えん 横浜店 (Kanazawa)

Various dishes from Garlic Jo's (Yokohama)

Niboshi ramen and special tantan ramen from Tanzo

Chicken karaage bento from Torikara

Dinner set menu from UMAMI Japanese sake dining (Yokohama)

Personal life/miscellaneous 

A lot of the big things this month have been/will be covered in their own standalone blog posts (linked above). I don't have a ton to share otherwise...at least that I can remember right now. It was good to have the big things to look forward to and enjoy experiencing this month. 

I did take a short solo journey into Tokyo (mainly just Harajuku) one free Saturday while my husband went to the Tokyo Game Show in Chiba with a friend. 

Not too many photos from that as I just focused on personal shopping, taking my time, browsing and enjoying some time by myself. I did make an EATME purchase but not much else. I may end up indefinitely pausing some of my shopping blog posts for a while because I can't keep up :(. I do plan on curbing my spending quite a bit going forward though, so maybe I'll find some time to catch up in the colder months.

This month's outfits can be found here.

Lots and lots of EATME this month. I can tell my wardrobe and tastes are definitely shifting a lot and I have to make a conscious effort to choose Liz Lisa stuff. It has felt like EATME stuff is still exciting and trendy but also just less obnoxious when I go out or even just to work and I've been enjoying that more. As the weather cools down, I know what I choose to wear will continue to change as well.

EDIT (10/17/2022) - Wow, I was rushing through this post that I forgot to shout out my birthday that happened at the end of this month! I turned 31 while my parents were visiting. I'm not much of a birthday celebration person, but I do figure it should be mentioned in the monthly recap at least. Check out Day 3 from my parents' trip recap to see what we did during that time.

Not the best monthly recap since I'm writing it so delayed and it's mainly links to other posts, but I'll take that in exchange for actually participating in things in real life and enjoying time with friends (and family this time!). As I look at the month ahead, and even what already happened in the first 10 days, October will hopefully be more of the same :)