Mark and I, Tokyo style

It’s time to blog!!  Yes, this is Rob.  And let’s just say “It’s about time!”

No doubt you read Lyana’s post about our trip to Tokyo for UK visas back in May (click here to read it) and she set me up perfectly at the end.  Well, now it’s time to play catch up. 

The trip to Tokyo started out with Lyana, Mark and me on Tuesday.  After applying for our visas (and then having some fun around Tokyo together) on Wednesday, Lyana took the Shinkansen back to Misawa, while Mark and I stayed behind for a night of father/son party time in Tokyo.

The first thing we did was go to “Children’s Castle”, which is a multi-story children’s play place surrounded by towering Tokyo skyscrapers.   This is one of the places that charges an admission fee (the one I would have preferred to visit was damaged in last year’s big earthquake, so it’s closed for repairs . . . still.  This one’s OK, though.  Unfortunately, the outdoor roof track was closed, which is the best part (bikes and scooters and such).  But there was of course WAKU WAKU LAND!!

On another floor was the music room with lots of drums and other percussion instruments for kids to play with.  When we arrived in this room there was a group performing children’s songs and a couple dozen kids with their parents sitting on the floor around these drums.  We sat in the back and tried to keep up, but as we hadn’t a clue what they were actually singing, we left until the show was over. 

When we returned, we put on a show of our own. 

We probably spent a good two hours there – would have been longer if more of it was open – and that was enough.  We were just having so much fun together, it didn’t matter what we were doing.

Eventually we made our way back to the hotel.  I picked up a small pizza from the café downstairs, put in a movie, and we had a pajama movie night (one of Mark’s all time favorite things to do). 

The next day we hit the ground running – literally.  There’s a beautiful wooded park just up the street from The New Sanno hotel.  We played on the toys.

We hiked the many trails, up and down the hills.

And took in the natural sites, all in the heart of Tokyo.  Oh, and Lantern was with us through it all, too.

In fact, here’s Lantern and Mark posing in front of the LDS temple, just across the street from the nature park.

And here’s the inseparable duo next to the spaghetti map of the Tokyo subway system.

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I enjoy taking pictures just about everywhere I go, and I like to think of myself as a decent ‘family’ photographer.  But sometimes, I just can’t seem to get the right perspective.  Enter Mark, the budding child photographer.  I gave Mark the camera (securely wrapping the strap around his wrist), taught him how to ‘point and click’, instructed him to “take pictures of everything” and then we were off – me pushing him along in his stroller.  What we ended up with were simple, real-life Tokyo photos from the perspective of a 3-year old child seated in a McClaren umbrella stroller.  Here are some of my favorites.

GALLERIA:  PERSPECTIVE OF A 3-YEAR OLD IN TOKYO

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I think Mark has a future in photography – at least until he’s out of the stroller.

Ah, that stroller.  No easier way to traverse the streets of Tokyo.  We were just passing the time, now.   In that twilight zone after checking out of the hotel but too soon to go straight to the train station.  So we ( I ) decided to explore.  We went to the Tokyo station, but instead of hanging out in the dungeons, waiting for our shinkansen, we just left the station, hoping to find something interesting.  And we did.  A bridge. 

Which then led to the Imperial Gardens, which we couldn’t actually enter, but they were pretty from the outside.  Here also demonstrates the advantage to strollers.  When it’s time to take a picture just park the stroller, step back a few paces and shoot, you’re done.

Of course it’s always nice when they (Mark and Lantern) decide to get out of the stroller for a change.

And it’s even better when a passerby agrees to take the photo for you.

And then it was time to go . . . back to Misawa, that is.  This is the restroom ON the train.  Far cry from those lavatories you see on the airplanes.  The Japanese know how to go in style.

No matter how much fun the trip is, we are always happy to get home to Misawa.  Mark . . .

and Lantern.

Rob

Spontaneous Trip to Tokyo

One thing for sure—having one kid is much easier than having three. 

Another thing is for sure—Mark is such a great traveller—he loves to be on the go and loves seeing new places and people.

Okay, so let me explain. According to the British immigration rules, Robert doesn’t need a visa to live in England, but the kids and I do. Because we live in Misawa, we are authorized to take a trip to Tokyo for three days (military has to allow time for travel) to apply in person at the UK visa center. Either Robert or I could have gone, but instead, we were able to go together plus take Mark along. We are grateful that we have friends here who were kind enough to take care of Alex and Katya while we were gone.

We took Shinkansen from Hachinohe to Tokyo.

“Welcome to Misawa Station”. It’s kind of interesting that the sign has an American flag on it.

After an easy three hour ride, we are in Tokyo. It was so easy to entertain Mark when there were two parents and one child. I was even able to read my book for a while.

The very front of our Shinkansen that goes all the way from Aomori in Northern Japan to Tokyo.

After we made our way to the New Sanno hotel, it was around one o’clock. Everyone was hungry so we decided to try this Soup café near McDonald’s by Hiroo station. The soups were really delicious. Robert ordered one that was called “Tokyo Borsch”.

We still had half a day left to explore Tokyo. Since we already had been to so many places there, we were trying to find something unique and new. Robert did some research online before we left and found a couple of museums that sounded interesting.  I didn’t have a clue where he was taking us, but once we arrived at Nezu station, I realized that we were at the same place that my mom, Katya and I visited in January. This time we got to explore a different side of that neighborhood. The ultimate destination was this Tokyo Art Museum—a small museum that also had a Kawaii exhibit (this unique Japanese cultural “obsession”, so to speak, with everything cute).

Unfortunately, when we got to the museum, we found out that there are no English explanations in the exhibit and that it was kind of small and expensive. It was disappointing, but we took a picture near the “Kawaii” poster (the pink one) and moved on.

Nezu area is a quiet residential area, so walking though the alleys and passing all the houses felt like we could be just locals going for a walk.

Nezu area is also close to the beautiful Ueno Park. Last October we took all our kids to Ueno Zoo, but this time we somehow turned up at a different side of the park, the one that has the lake.

The lake was not very big, but it was beautiful. It was amazing to see such a calm place in the middle of a huge city.

And something that we rarely do—we rented a paddle boat!

Our duck was the perfect size for us—it fit two adults and an “infant”. Mark felt so special having both mom and dad just to himself.

Then we walked through beautiful Ueno park.

In case you need to use the restroom, make sure to read the sign.

All those vending machines around! Gotta be adventurous.

In the distance, we kept seeing Tokyo Skytree—the new tower that was just completed months ago and was open to the public merely a week before we were visiting! It is now officially the tallest tower in the world at 634 m tall!

We asked some of the workers at the park about how long it would take to walk to the tower. Apparently, it is soo huge that although it looked like a 20 min walk, ladies at the information desk told me it would be more like one hour or longer. “BUT!”, they said, “we have a free shuttle now that goes from Ueno Park to the Skytree. The stop is right there.” That was fantastic news—a direct bus to the tower (there was no direct way to get there by subway).

The bus ride took us about 20 minutes in rush hour traffic.

Mark kept repeating the same thing: “I am hungry”.  With this facial expression too.

But still he was doing great.

And then we saw this in our CEILING windows (they madethe ceiling of the shuttle see-through so that you can enjoy the view of the tower right away).

As we were approaching the tower, I started to see how ginormous this building was! The bottom part of the tower is connected to a couple more buildings and together they make Skytree village. On the bottom floor of the tower, you can find this very unique way of displaying Tokyo city.

If you click on the picture, I think, you’ll be able to read the description.

For several minutes we sort of wondered around the building trying to orient ourselves. We figured out that we would not be able to go up to the top of the tower because tickets to do so had been sold out till the middle of July.

Instead, we went outside at first. This picture documents that our “baby” Mark saw the tallest tower in the world.

And Robert saw it too (yes, the date kind of messed up the picture).

In reality, this tower is simply an amazing sight! It is almost twice the height of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Huge!

You can walk between “village” buildings via covered walkways that have beautiful views of the city.

Of course, souvenir stores are everywhere!

Some parts of the “village” have shops and exhibits dedicated to display of the specifics of Japanese culture. Wish we could understand Japanese—there was a lot to learn.

We didn’t need to speak any language to try on these goofy hats though (Robert said he didn’t want to try one on because he was concerned to get lice-hehehe).

And he opted to take a picture in front of the sumo wrestler’s picture instead.

Mark’s sumo wrestler pose…

Apparently, Skytree opening in Tokyo was a big deal because we saw advertisements of this sort everywhere!

It was around six o’clock by now, so we had to find a place to eat. There were dozens of options! So many restaurants on different floors. We walked through several….maybe we should have gotten this order of cutlets in a shape of the Skytree?

Or maybe we should have just skipped dinner and indulged in some exquisite looking pastries and sweets…

Nah….we went to a Chinese place just because we saw these huge “giozas” (potstickers). The rest of the food turned out very delicious too!

Mark is showing off his new best friend—his name is Lantern. When we were walking around in Nezu area, we saw this shop that had a bin of random toys outside for 50 yen (60 cents), so I bought this lantern for him. No idea what it says on it…hopefully it’s not anything indecent.

Since we couldn’t go all the way to the top of the tower, we decided to find out how high we COULD go. It turned out that we could go up to the 31st floor! So we did:)

Whoa, what a day! We were ready to get to our hotel room and rest before our early morning interview the next day.

Our interview went smoothly although it took over an hour.

We had some time to spare before lunch, so we walked around Tokyo a little bit more. And then we found this fun Mexican restaurant near New Sanno that served really good authentic meals (apparently good Mexican food is hard to find in Tokyo). Mark had fun with his friend.

And with the sombrero…

And I thoroughly enjoyed my chicken enchilada of great proportions.

If you are ever in Tokyo, staying at the New Sanno, I definitely recommend this place, especially for lunch (it will probably be the most expensive taco/enchilada/burrito you’ll ever have, but you’ll be able to say that you had delicious Mexican food in Japan).

It was time for us to go our separate ways—I caught a train back to Misawa to take care of Katya and Alex. And Robert decided to stay with Mark in Tokyo for one more day to get some bonding time (hopefully, once our house is packed out, he’ll get a minute to blog about that).

Good night!