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We actually stayed at the Palm Terrace hotel. The ‘Palm’ and the ‘Fountain’ are nearly identical hotels side by side. They’re different colours with one focused on ‘Palm trees’ and one focused on ‘Fountains’. They are right on the edge of the ocean and either are brand new or look brand new. They were perfect for what we needed.
The Palm (as did the fountain) had a disney shuttle leaving every 10-15 minutes (I think??). All I know is that whenever we wanted to go… one was there waiting for us! The ride took about 20 minutes. We HIGHLY recommend this Hotel. It was much more inexpensive then the disney hotels AND you got a free breakfast buffet! As most of you know… I’m a ‘slightly’ picky eater and I have a ‘list’ of qualifications that a food has to pass before I’ll eat it.
1. does my Mom eat it? (the only exception to this is crab – and crab is a realitively new food that I will eat)
2. does it look weird?
3. does the name of it sound weird?
4. does it come from an animal other then a pig, cow, chicken or selected fish? If it does – it’s a no go.
5. does it smell weird?
6. was it made in North america? Or at least, can I force myself to THINK it was made in North america? (void if made in Mexico)
7. this is my newest – did Monique & Reagan grow it using their ‘fancy toilet’? LMAO… just joking you two… I had to throw that in!!
Okay… so anyway… you can CLEARLY see that I have issues when eating ‘different’ things. The Palm buffet had a large assortment of foods. Croissants, butter rolls, milk buns, churros, tomatoe onion rolls, green funky buns, eggs, sausage, ham, rice pudding, bean salad, 4 different kinds of Japanese salad, yogurt, chinese soup, juices, coffee and tea.

I ate croissants. YAY!!

Anyway… enough about the food! (for now – you will continually hear about this for the next 2 months)

When we walked into our hotel room I started snapping pictures. It was FUNKY! I have video of Sydney watching a Japanese childrens show. HILARIOUS! We were both mesmorized with confusion! We all had seperate single beds to sleep in, Japanese slippers to wear, little toothbrushes with NASTY toothpaste, a futuristic coffee machine, the NEATEST and most practical shower you’ve ever seen and…. the big attraction… THE TOILET!
When mentioning the toilet, Karis’ name automatically comes up.
Karis. Loved. The. Toilets.
I won’t go into details about the exact names that she had for the bidet (google it if you don’t know) but she had a great time with this new toilet feature!! If we were missing Karis, you could find her on the toilet playing with the buttons! Some of these even had a musical flushing button to help cover those ‘embarassing sounds’!! Too funny!
Later on in a disney post I’ll fill you in on the ‘traditional’ Japanese toilets…

The Palm hotel had a disney store and a convienience store located right inside. Ron found interesting things to eat in the convienience store… I found a banana! (I pretended it was chiquita!!) so that was handy!
The disney store had basically a variety of what you could find at disneyland or disney sea. It was great for Karis’ afterthought of “OH I WISH I GOT MY FRIENDS PENS LIKE SYDNEY DID!!” … perfect….

“I’m not gonna eat that” Shannon

When we flew out of Edmonton early on sunday morning, we had to fly to Minneapolis to catch our connector to Tokyo. If you look at a map… this was backtracking! It was too bad that we couldn’t have flown to Vancouver instead. We had over 3 hours in Minneapolis before we left for Japan.
The flight was long, and depressing when we saw that after leaving St Albert about 9 hours before, we were flying over it again! We looked down on the whole Edmonton area! Now I know that when I see planes flying over St Albert – they may be going to Tokyo!!
We were lucky enough to fly over Alaska. It was beautiful! I’ve never had much of a desire to go there, but after seeing it from above it’s appealing! I loved watching Ron’s GPS as we flew over this area. It’s so neat to know the names of cities & towns below. So neat in fact that I had quite the attitude when the flight attendants told me – (for the second time) – to shut my blind on my window! It apparently made it hard for the few people awake to watch the movie being played. I wasn’t impressed. It’s not everyday that you can see Alaska from above!
This flight was unique to any that I have ever taken in that it NEVER got dark! I guess that what happens when you fly into the day ahead of you!
Ron made friends with the Japanese man sitting next to him on the plane. Neither of them spoke the same language, but they took turns with Karis drawing pictures on a notepad. It was cute to see!
It was neat flying over Tokyo before we landed. Watching the ocean with the land in the distance, you could see (schools? swarms? packs? groups?) of whales swimming together.
Once we landed in Tokyo, we waited until the end to get off the plane. This was so we weren’t rushed with the kids and could make sure we had everything together cause man oh man… we had crap everywhere!! I was feeling good about it all until we got to the Hotel & realized that I left my BRAND NEW Father Jan zip up hoodie on the plane I bought the girls and I all matching ones with this trip specifically in mind… in case it were to get cool at night!)
Did you know in Japan they drive on the wrong side of the road?? This I didn’t know! I suppose they think it’s the right side… but they’re wrong…. This small fact nearly got us run over one day! We were looking left for oncoming cars when we should have been looking right! We didn’t do that again….
We had what they call a Limo bus to the hotel. Karis loved the fancy kids seat that folded off an isle seat into the isle. I think she was a little big for it… but she insisted it was fine!

“please don’t let us get run over” Shannon