I could live in Tokyo

Our last day in Tokyo turned out to be one of those days that we rarely get to have together—just Katya and I, doing whatever we wanted.

So you know what was on Katya’s wish list of things to do—go swimming at the hotel pool while I was watching her and then watch TV together before we had to check out. Sounds like she really craves this one-on-one attention.

After we checked out of New Sanno, we walked up the street to explore this beautiful park that is located across the street from the LDS temple—Arisugawa park. Although this was in the middle of January, the weather turned out to be gorgeous. Here are a couple of shots of the park:

I guess life is so good after you retire in Japan that you can just go spend the day at the park and catch some fish at a local pond.

This park also had a rather big playground and a soccer field. It was great to see a vast area for kids to run around in the middle of a busy city.

Many parents take their kids to this place—lots of them ride bikes.

This area around New Sanno and the temple is a very international area—there a many different embassies located in the neighborhood, thus making it a very popular place for expats to live. 

While at the park, we noticed several girls (speaking English) running around and playing. I saw how much Katya wanted to join them but was scared to do so. I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to teach about how it is okay to be brave and approach new people to make friends. So we had a quick discussion about “What would be the worst thing that could happen if you ask them if you could play with the?”. After her thinking over if she could handle rejection and possibly them saying “no”, she decided to try to join them in their game. Fortunately, the girls noticed her trying to “hang out” closer and closer and she asked if she could play too. Of course, the girls said yes, and Katya had a blast for the next hour playing with these American kids living in Tokyo.

I chatted with their mom for a while about what it was like for them to live in Japan. Her husband works for General Motors, so they’ve been in Tokyo for over a year now. She told me that surprisingly it’s not as easy to find extracurricular sports activities for kids here, but an international school for kids is quite good. She also expressed her amazement with the Japanese people and how polite and nice they are. When talking to her, I thought to myself that I probably wouldn’t mind living in Tokyo for a couple of years either:)

After a very energetic afternoon, we were starving. We were doing everything in a standard way—it was after 3 pm and we still hadn’t had lunch! So, listening to the advice of that expat mom, we went to the Indian place (three minute walk from the Hiroo station) and had a superior meal! 

We ordered two curry lunches with huge naan bread. Of course, we couldn’t finish it all, so we had the owner of the restaurant bag it all for us and save for our dinner on the bus.

After “lunch” we had three hours to spare, so we took the subway to Harajuku. We were looking for some girly shopping. First stop—a huge Daiso shop—100 yen store (sort of like Dollar store in the states). It had three stories! The most complete Daiso I’d ever seen!

Here is Katya on the 2nd floor.

Each character—Hello Kitty, Shinkansen train, Winnie-the-Pooh—had it’s own section with all sorts of merchandise for kids.

After Daiso we stopped at Forever 21 (I could buy half of that store’s accessories if I could) and H&M. I was very surprised to find affordable clothes and jewelry there, at least compared to other stores in Japan.

Here is a cool picture of Katya near Harajuku station.

Well, our day was almost over. From Harajuku we went to New Sanno to get our suitcase and then to Shinjuku to find our bus stop. I won’t go into all the detail, but it took us almost an hour to find the spot where the bus was supposed to pick us up! Finally, at 9 pm we boarded the bus and 11 hours later were back in Misawa.

Katya and I had a blast—she is so mature and well behaved now when we travel. Hope she remembers this girls’ trip to Tokyo for a long time:).