A Happy New Year to all of you. We celebrated the first day of the new year by taking along walk to a shrine. The same shrine as we have been to the last few years now. And we bought us a pair of tigers this year too. These tigers will protect us from harm and sickness during the year.

But before we walked to the shrine we had a short walk with Coco again. Today he behaved much better than yesterday. And he walked and run must of the way around the block.

The shrine was too far for Coco so we left him at home with Chie’s mother and had a 2 hours walk to and from the shrine. On our way back we stopped at a tea factory to buy some green tea.

The area around Tokorozawa is called Shimotomi and is a place where they grow a lot of tea. This area has many small family owned tea factories like the one we visited today.

Finally back home we continued playing with Coco and tried the tea we just bought. The tea tasted great, a mild and sweet taste.