About two weeks ago, I was lucky enough to spend a weekend in San Francisco with Mazda. It was a quick trip, but I had such a fun time exploring the city with the bloggers.
If you live in the Bay Area, you will understand horrible traffic if you try heading into the city on a Friday. I considered myself lucky that it only took me two hours to get to the hotel!
Mazda’s team hosted the bloggers at the Hotel Kabuki in Japantown. Since Mazda was sponsoring the J-Pop Festival, the entire weekend revolved around Japanese culture.
A mini room tour
One of my blogging besties, Nancy, stayed at the hotel with her little dog Alfie. I would have loved to have Mochi stay with me at the hotel, but he doesn’t like to stay quiet if I leave him in the room.
On Friday night, we walked over to Benihana for a group dinner. I thought it was pretty interesting that a lot of the group had not been to Benihana before. It’s one of my favorite places to eat for a birthday dinner, so I shared some of my favorite meals with the group. Always order the shrimp and lobster!
^^ It says I love Mazda!
After dinner, Nancy and I walked around Japantown for a bit. Since we had an early start the next day, we head to bed early. Also, I had eaten my weight in shrimp and needed to lie down.
The next morning, I got up to eat breakfast with the group and test out the new Mazda CX-9. 
This car totally blew me away. The Mazda CX-9 has been completely redone for 2016 and it definitely has that WOW factor. When I hopped in for my drive, I had to pause to check out all the bells and whistles.
It has three rows, fits seven passengers, and in the Signature package it has Nappa leather and genuine Rosewood trim. Some of my favorite features were included in this trim package. I love back-up cameras, rear cross traffic alerts, and blind spot monitoring. It seems like every detail in the car was completely custom.
Plus it drove unlike any large SUV. I felt like it drove like a sedan. It was large, but it didn’t feel overwhelming. And it could turn on a dime and powered through the San Francisco hills.
I became a huge fan of Mazda after this drive.
The rest of the day was spent in the Japanese Tea Garden. Even though I had visited the garden before, it was different going in with a tour guide. I really enjoyed listening about the history of the garden and the Hagiwara family. You can read more about the garden here.
This little garden makes you feel like you are miles outside of the city. It’s when you see a peak of Sutro Tower outside of the trees that you are reminded that you are still in San Francisco.
Even though I just had a quick 24 hours with the Mazda team, it was a blast. If you want to see the rest of the blogger’s weekend at the J-Pop Festival, head to Nancy’s video on YouTube.
Thank you to Mazda for the amazing weekend!
12 responses
You have a silhouette machine? Expecting email from me shortly 🙂
You have a silhouette machine? Expecting email from me shortly 🙂
Thanks for tagging me! Can’t wait to participate! By the way, your blog doesn’t show updates on BlogLovin’. It says”At the moment we are unable to retrieve posts from this blog.” I’m not sure if it’s something that you’re aware of or if it’s only happening to me but I just wanted to let you know. 🙂
i dont know whats going on with my feed:( still looking into it! your feature goes LIVE tomorrow!
Thanks for tagging me! Can’t wait to participate! By the way, your blog doesn’t show updates on BlogLovin’. It says”At the moment we are unable to retrieve posts from this blog.” I’m not sure if it’s something that you’re aware of or if it’s only happening to me but I just wanted to let you know. 🙂
i dont know whats going on with my feed:( still looking into it! your feature goes LIVE tomorrow!
I’m still waiting/hoping to be a housewife someday too haha. and my dream would be to have a fancier/bigger house and lots of sweet dogs. love that you donate to your local shelter!
— jackie @ jade and oak
I’m still waiting/hoping to be a housewife someday too haha. and my dream would be to have a fancier/bigger house and lots of sweet dogs. love that you donate to your local shelter!
— jackie @ jade and oak
This is such a cute idea. I love it! I love crafting too.
This is such a cute idea. I love it! I love crafting too.
Oh my sweet jumpins, you’re some sweet linking my video! Thanks buddy-pal. It was awesome having you on that trip!!!!!
I am just bummed I didn’t get to go on the whole trip. But just watching you get all excited at Benihana was enough for me 🙂