I finally made it to an Owl-cafe in Shin-Kiba in Tokyo back in January. The cafe was small, but very clean. You could pay extra to go into the owl room and pet the birds. I loved them, but wish they would have had a little more wing-room to fly around.

You can find the cafe here:

Every new year, shimekazari, the decorations in the pictures, are hung up on all the buildings in Japan. I love them and snapped several pictures when I went for a walk a couple of weeks ago.

I had the opportunity to go to sumo again a couple of weeks ago. The sumo tournaments happen a couple of times a year in Tokyo, and last for 2 weeks each time. I first went maybe five years ago mostly because I wanted to experience something “Japanese”, little did I know that I ended up really enjoying it. There are tons of fights, they are fast paced and it is incredibly entertaining. This time around I was very lucky, a friend of mine managed to get excellent seats, and we were sitting all the way down in the front. That was a new experience for me, seeing all the facial expressions and muscle movement of the wrestlers. I don’t know how it works other places in Japan, but in Tokyo you can show up early the same morning as you want to go, and they always sell some cheap “nosebleed seat” tickets if you don’t want to spend a fortune for a ticket.