Our trip back to Australia with Tsuyoshi and Kyoko

Two days after the wedding, it was time for us to say good bye to my family in Japan.. lucky for us this time we are going back to Australia with Tsuyoshi and Kyoko the newly wedded couple as we are being the guide to their honeymoon in Australia. Apparently Tsuyoshi and Kyoko did some research and found that we could drive to Kobe, park car there for free and catch ferry to the Osaka airport which is only about 15 dollars... it worked out much cheaper than all of us taking train there and besides Kobe is a nice place to visit and haven't been there for over 25 years. My other brother Seiji decided that he too would like to stick around with us for a little longer so we all hopped on the car and left to Kobe together.

Kobe is famous for many things but one of the major attraction is many of the old foreigner's houses on the hill.. they are all once occupied by different foreign families that came to Japan in early days and settled in the port city of Kobe. They are all nice looking houses and many of them charges entrance fee so we didn't go into any of them but hopefully next time we can visit inside the house.

We dropped off Seiji at the train station and then we were off to the Kobe port to catch ferry.. it was bout 1 hour ride and very comfortable and convenient, they even had a shuttle bus waiting for us to go to the airport. The whole airport adventure went pretty smoothly, no problem at the passport control, we stocked up on food and drink for the plane, Tsuyoshi and Kyoko bought air cushion for their travel.. and we were off to Japan!! Great thing about going from Japan is that we could stuff our bag with so much yummy snacks and rice balls, bread etc... we were very happy not to pay for any of the food and drink on the plane.

Tsuyoshi and Kyoko getting ready for some serious sleeping. I think this was their first time travelling overseas together.. and Shiori and I tried to keep to ourselves as much as possible so that they can just enjoy each other.

Before you know it, it's a morning and looking at beautiful sun rise

We arrived at Gold Coast airport for brief stopover and then caught plane to the Sydney airport. I was slightly worried about different food we were carrying but custom didn't have any problem with them which was lucky as you can see later.

Another short flight later, we arrived at Sydney airport.. picked up rental car and then went to meet Amelia and Saichi who were staying at friends place. It was a very very happy reunion for everyone.

And we surprised Amelia with the present we brought back from Japan.. Amelia's favourite donut from Mister Donut.. yes we carried that all the way from Kobe, thank God it went through custom.