Six Tokyo Moments

It's the same every weekend: 
Mike: We should go into Tokyo and do something fun with the kids.
Me: It's so far, it takes so long. The kids are so noisy on the trains.
Mike: It takes an hour. We live near a world-class city. We have to explore it.

And so we go.

And mostly we have a great time.

Our outings often start with a snack from Starbucks in the train station here in town. A pre-train snack cuts down on train tantrums and buys us a little more time to explore wherever we end up before we need to stop for lunch. We've miraculously managed to get the kids on board with a we-only-get-a-snack-if-we-have-time policy, which helps us get out the door quickly and catch the faster trains into Tokyo.

 
A brief round-up of our Tokyo explorations thus far:
(This is, like, six separate posts smushed into one, but let's just consider this more like one-stop shopping!) 

Our first outing was to the natural history museum. This was back during the new year's holidays, so it was super-crowded. We were also still probably a bit jet-lagged, which led to Jacob being super-fussy and then falling asleep. Then, because he was asleep, we had a real trouble finding a restaurant that would accommodate the stroller. So we ended up eating sort of icky cafeteria food. Anyway, we learned a few lessons that day. And we did manage to see a few cool things, even if the museum wasn't super kid-friendly:


Also, Natalie almost gotten eaten by a whale.

But then she ate a crepe, so all was well. (Crepes are a very common street snack food here.)

Second outing: we met our old friends at a park between their house and ours. This was a great park - I think we'll definitely return here, especially as the weather gets nicer.

The park also had a really cool slide. This is a short of the kids sliding together, but Jacob was definitely charging up those steps all on his own so he could slide down again and again.

We worked up quite an appetite for a yummy Italian lunch - there was a great place right by the park. (Italian food is definitely our go-to when we are out with the kids: they reliably eat it, and it reliably has very few nuts in it. I regret that we don't have pictures of them eating sushi and the like - and I think that they'll regret this missed culinary opportunity later - but it is what it is right now.)

Third outing: Tokyo Sea Life Park. This one was a real winner. It was fairly close to us, fairly easy to get to, and super-affordable.

Requisite shots of marine life:

And of children + marine life:

The kids were, indeed, totally fascinated by the animals. Here's a shot where they're actually looking at the camera!

For the parents, the best / second-best part of the day was that we were able to pass through Tokyo station and check out this amazing vegetarian ramen place we'd read about. It's become our favorite lunch stop every time we're in Tokyo. It's that good. I also don't have any pictures because - although I promise myself each time that I'm going to take pictures of the food - I just dive in when it's served. It's that good.

Ummmm, so here's proof we were in Tokyo station:

It's weird that they let Natalie drive the trains, but, well, she can be very persuasive!

Fourth outing: Tokyo Fire Museum. I have very mixed feelings about tragedy tourism, but this isn't really a museum about fires in Tokyo as much as a museum about firefighting in Tokyo - which turns out to be really interesting. Also, super kid-friendly (just wait, my friends, just wait). Also, free. Perhaps a return visit or twenty is in our future.

Here's the crew posing by the helicopter hanging in the entry of the museum.

Did I say helicopter? The museum has not one but TWO (old, real) firefighting helicopters that the kids can climb inside and pretend to fly. It's a like a rotor system to heaven.

Of course there are also fire trucks. Here are two of Tokyo's finest behind the wheel:

Also, if you are fighting fires, you need to dress the part. Duh. Safety first!



And you need some help from a giant cartoon firefighter friend. Clearly.

We ended that day passing through Tokyo station. The parents got ramen. The kids got to see the shinkansen up close. Fun fact: you can buy a platform-only ticket. This is, well, exactly what it sounds like: a ticket to nowhere. Whether this is throwing your money away or one of the best thrills your three year-old will ever get really depends on if you hate joy or not.

Yeah, there was no way Jacob was going to look at the camera when looking at this was an option:

Natalie ended the day with a crepe. Jacob ended the day with a waffle. Jacob was not very interesting in sharing his waffle!

  
Our fifth outing was to Asukayama Park. As it turns out, if you start researching "best playground in Tokyo," you'll find a lot of playgrounds.... We knew we were going to have beautiful weather that weekend, so doing something outside seemed perfect. We actually considered going strawberry picking, but were then put off by the cost and logistics. A Tokyo park it was! And this park hit it out of the park! We had this particular adventure two weeks ago and Jacob is still talking about this every day. He calls it "the fancy park" and wants to know when we can go back. The park will likely be beautiful (and super-crowded!) during cherry blossom time, but I think we may try to go back then for our own blossom-based event.

The playground is big and within a larger park, so there are no immediate worries about kids dashing into traffic - which is good, since the sight lines at the park are less than ideal. Speaking of the larger park, do you know how you access that? Oh, yeah, you come right out of the train station and ride up a free monorail (the park is on top of a big hill). So, not only do the kids get to ride a monorail, but they can then look down on the train tracks - regular trains, subway, and shinkansen. Jacob basically ate no lunch that day because he kept running over to the fence to check out the trains.

Trains were definitely the theme of this park. There are two old trains that children can climb in, on, and under. This was a hit.

The park also had climbing structures, slides, a sand area, and a baby area.


At one point, a magician even showed up. 

 By the end of the day, everyone was very tired!

Our sixth outing was to the Tokyo Toy Museum. I really don't think the English name of this place is doing much for it. I had envisioned cases and cases of old toys that kids couldn't touch. In reality, it's much more akin to a children's museum. There were a few things a little too close to eye- and reach-level that kids weren't supposed to touch, but, basically, touching and playing was generally encouraged - there was even a room with a treehouse that the kids could climb up and play in, a room full of board games, a pretend farm, a room full of musical instruments, and a room full of wooden toys. And all the toys were super-cool, imagination-stoking toys. I'm a fan!

We went with Mike's host sister (from a different family than the Hokkaido host family - he gets around!) and her family.

My kids apparently took that "make a funny face" direction very literally!

Toy time!

Tea time!


Toe time!

Doll time? Always!

We ended the day passing through Tokyo station and getting some ramen (see why my failure to get a picture is so shameful?!). Jacob got a pretzel.

We hope to keep exploring Tokyo. While we may revisit some of these places, we're also really looking forward to discovering new fun things. Stay tuned!

Foxy Follow-up

In the post about Sapporo, I lamented the lack of picture of the wild fox we glimpsed. I was wrong. Natalie drew a picture of it a few days later, but I hadn't grouped it with the Sapporo pictures so I forgot to include it. Enjoy!

 

Sapporo

Remember when I said that I was worried I couldn't keep this up? Yeah . . . .

But I want to share some pictures from our trip to Sapporo. Going to the Sapporo Snow Festival is something I'd wanted to do for a long time. 


I don't exactly remember why we didn't go the last time we were living in Japan. Did we find out about it too late? Were we too broke? Did it seem like the only way to get there was an overnight ferry ride on winter seas (something some friends of our later did)? I'm not sure.

This trip was made more affordable thanks to extreme budget airlines (no free water, no actual gate at Narita, no checking your bags in too early, etc.) and the tip that we could go a few days early and see the snow sculptures in progress. Not going during the festival meant that both airfare and lodging was a lot cheaper.

We were also able to visit a friend from our old grad program. 

 

Our friend lives just outside Sapporo - the further we got from the city center, there was more and more snow piled up everywhere. Our friend later told us that this was a "nothing year" in terms of snow. We had a lovely evening with him - so much hospitality, such a lovely house and family. Also, apparently, there are wild foxes in the Sapporo suburbs (no picture, but we did see one). This is at the train station at the end of the evening - doesn't look like a "nothing year" to me, but clearly I'm no expert!

Here are some snow sculptures. It's hard to capture the scale and the detail of these sculptures. They are so large! And so elaborate! They're also totally constructed with military precision - sometimes even by the military (theirs and ours), actually. It really was amazing and totally worth it. It was super-cool (the puns, they write themselves)

Partial group shot:

 
We also stumbled upon some more informal (but still elaborate) snow sculptures being built in a local park. This wasn't part of the official festival; it seemed more like a community effort. Sort of puts an ordinary snowperson to shame, no?

Sapporo is really beautiful. Don't get me wrong, it's, like, so cold and so far north that it's almost in Russia. But the mountains come right down to the city on one side and the Japan Sea is on the other side. So it's a chilly sort of beauty. (There's also excellent skiing close to Sapporo and super-excellent skiing slightly further away in Niseko.)

But you know what warmed our hearts? We got to spend a lot of time with the host family Mike stayed with during his time in Japan in 1998. It's funny how time passes - he stayed there as a college student and now he returns as a college professor with two kids. He was both gratified and grateful.

Here's a family shot in an elevator in Sapporo. When we travel with Jacob in the stroller, we're all about the elevators (so! many! elevators!).

We also made sure the kids had some time to play in the snow.

Natalie and Mike also went ice skating.

 

 This, of course, required hot chocolate afterwards.

 

Unfortunately, all this playing and walking didn't sufficiently wear Jacob out. Either that, or hotels are just too exciting. We had a really hard time getting him to settle down and go to sleep at night. This picture was taken about three hours after we started on the bedtime process. He is, with no irony at all, holding the Do Not Disturb sign from the hotel door.

So that was hard. Also hard was that he was then so grouchy and cranky that he was really difficult and screamy. We had to leave the hotel restaurant one morning because he was throwing a fit. Know what makes for a grouchy day? A mother who doesn't get to eat breakfast. So we're off hotels for now. And for the next ten years.

Also sad was that we managed to lose Natalie's brand new fancy ski jacket. I had snagged this jacket at an amazing deal after some serious internet research and sale-stalking. The jacket had a zip-in fleece and a system where you could extend the sleeves, so it would have lasted two years. I'm really, really upset about it. It was an awful moment to realize that we were missing it as the express train pulled out of the station en route to the airport. The first train stop was already so far from the town, plus we had a flight to catch and airport lunch plans with Mike's host family. There was just no going back. We called a few different places a few times, but, well, it's gone. Like I said, I'm more broken up about this than I should be. I keep looking at sale sites for similar jackets, but I suspect it's still too early for great deals on ski jackets. Maybe I'll find something in April or at the start of next winter. I don't know; I guess I just hope the lost jacket just finds someone who really needs a warm jacket. 

But, well, here's a ray of sunshine: realizing that we were in real jacket trouble (the kid had to go to school, jacket or no jacket), I posted on the local parents' Facebook group asking where to buy a used or new jacket and offering to buy an outgrown jacket. A very lovely woman then met me the next day, brought three jackets her daughter had outgrown, let us pick one, and then refused to accept any money. 

So kind, right? Her only request was that we pass the coat on to someone else who could use it when we were done with it. This was so touching because it's so hard to be here without extra clothes, friends to help, and local knowledge (we honestly didn't even know where to go to buy a reasonably priced winter jacket). Your village is, indeed, where you find it and where you make it.

Jacob doesn't go for the cosmic karma lessons. He just consoled himself with a melon pan the size of his face.

The above is actually a good reminder because, well, any weekend we don't use the Epi-pen is a good weekend, lost jackets or no lost jackets.

Stay cool, my friends.

Happy Holidays!

The holiday is, of course, Valentine's Day. Because that's how we roll. 

To be fair, what with the trans-Pacific move and all, I gave up doing a holiday card in the early fall. We did, however, get family pictures taken; memories still matter, even if we weren't making cards to share. I looked into doing a paper Valentine's Day card / postcard, but the cost was a prohibitive, given that we'd have needed the printer to mail them stateside for us. 

So I built us a cheapie online card.

We wish you love, light, happiness, health, and peace today, this year, and in the coming years. We also wish you hot chocolate, good books, beautiful flowers, lovely sunrises, and cute animal videos. May you find and enjoy the things you love!

Jacob's food songs

This is a video of Jacob singing songs and doing dances about ramen, sembei (rice crackers), and mochi (sticky rice cakes).  These songs are from his school.  He is generally better at singing about Japanese food than actually eating it...