KidZania Tokyo / Spring Breaaaaak!

I still have a long post coming about things we've been doing in Tsukuba (the counterpart to last week's long Tokyo post), but I thought I'd share about Natalie's spring break first.

We took her to . . . Japan! Kind of a win / lose spring break, that. Both of us had to work last week, so we traded off childcare and did some fun local things. I think it was pretty good - Jacob still went to school, so Natalie got a lot of attention from us even as we were scrambling to balance work and everything else.

Monday, Natalie and I hung out. Natalie helped me with my Monday housecleaning chores. Afterwards, we went and bought some jump ropes. A few weeks ago, Natalie had seen some girls her age at the park jumping rope. I could tell that she desperately wanted to join in, but that she was afraid to because she didn't know how. So spring break was all about learning to jump rope. 

It is actually much harder to teach someone to jump rope than it sounds. For one thing, you can't practice the skill slowly (or, rather, you can, but it's actually harder). Second, there are so many coordinated movements that have to happen in quick succession - it's a real cognitive and corporeal challenge for a learner. Third, it takes listening skills - an area in which six year-olds don't always excel. But, hey, she's now pretty good at listening for the rope to hit the ground. Maybe I just need to sound more like a jump rope?

So, this was what success looked like on Thursday. I'm so proud of her!

 
Tuesday, Natalie went to work with Mike. He usually bikes to his office on campus, but for this excursion, they took the city bus. Exciting! Natalie met Mike's officemates and had lunch on campus (with Natalie's doll, Annabelle, of course).

We spent the afternoon watching a movie in a fort in the living room. Interestingly enough, if you offer a six year-old the choice of watching a movie on the couch or a watching a movie in a fort, she'll pick the fort. Who knew?

Wednesday, Natalie and I headed for Tokyo bright and early. We were going to KidZania! I can't really explain the concept behind this amusement park. Well, I mean I could, but someone else has already done a better job (seriously, go read the article - it's fascinating). Basically, KidZania is a mini-adult world where kids can work jobs, earn pretend money, put this money in the bank, withdraw the money using a fake ATM card, and spend their pretend money on goods and services. The whole place operates on a mini economy: doing the more desirable activities (say, working in the ice cream shop) or enjoying services (getting your nails painted) costs money, but doing other jobs (working at the bottling plant) earns you money. What makes it so compelling / amazing / uncomfortable / sell-out-y is that it is incredibly life-like with tons of product placement. So the airplane for the kid pilots and cabin attendants is a portion of a real plane, painted as an ANA plane, and there are kid-sized ANA uniforms. Likewise for almost all the other kid jobs - these are real brands that the kids recognize and they get real uniforms that really look the part that they can wear while wielding kid-sized tools of the trade. The. Kids. LOVE. It. You should have seen Natalie's face when she realized she'd get to put on the ice cream shop apron and hat!

We were there for English Wednesday, so the majority of the activities were in English. That really helped make it a successful day for us. Also, it was Natalie's spring break, but it wasn't a vacation week for Japanese schools or a weekend, so it was fairly uncrowded, especially early before the school groups arrived. That said, there were some activities where slots for the day filled up, and that was that. Natalie got to do her top choices (fashion boutique, beauty salon, and baby nursery) so she wasn't too disappointed. 

(Fashion boutique, bank visit)

(Soft serve ice cream shop, flower shop)

(Beauty salon, comic book artist)

(Bottling plant, baby nursery)

There isn't a KidZania in the US, but I would really recommend this as an activity if you end up with a 5-9 year-old in a place where there is one - and if you can go on an uncrowded day. There is also a parent lounge with free wifi, but I found that I was pretty involved in helping Natalie choose activities, navigate the directions for waiting, and just generally following her around, so there wasn't really a lot of time to chill in the lounge. There also really aren't activities for younger kids, so this was a perfect Natalie-only activity. We had a lot of fun together!

 Thursday, Natalie and daddy went for a picnic in the park. Smiles were abundant!

Friday, Natalie joined us on a lunch date. We've struck out finding a babysitter here, so the only dates Mike and I have here are lunches when the kids are in school. Natalie has recently warmed to Indian food (mostly naan, but a hint of curry, too), so we hit up an Indian restaurant. On the way, we fought off a bear. It's wild world out there.

Mike then had to leave for Tokyo, so Natalie and I rounded out spring break with an ice cream bar in the park. (Why, yes, her new hat does read "Smile Beans - Everybody Have Fun Today.")

Spring break: Just did it.

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!