Tokyo - Day 5

Our 5th day in Tokyo was the only day it rained during our entire trip. What a blessing! Tokyo is about as rainy as Seattle so it is pretty much a miracle that it rained only once. It worked out perfectly because there were quite a few things we wanted to do indoors so we crammed them all into one day. 

We started the day at the 100 yen store. It's like a very glorified, huge $1 store but not nearly as trashy as the stores in the U.S. We spent a long time in the store and the kids loaded up on lots of fun trinkets and treats. I loved seeing all the different things you could buy there. They had awesome office supplies and travel items and we bought quite a bit. 

 There were definitely some interesting snacks. This is freeze dried shrimp:

 Freeze dried sardines:

 Dried seaweed with tempura:

We headed over to get conveyor belt sushi for lunch. Unfortunately a bunch of my pictures from lunch got deleted so this is all I have. We LOVED the sushi in Japan. And we tried some pretty crazy stuff and liked just about everything we tried! Our kids are great and adventurous eaters and they ate a ton of the sushi too. The little girls loved Udon noodle soup with tempura shrimp. The menu is all on computer screens and once you pick the pieces you want, they travel to you on a conveyor belt (missing pictures - boo). It was so much fun! The kids couldn't get enough of watching the belt deliver our food.

 You are charged by the plate and these are all our plates we ate. About 80 plates with 2 pieces each for our two families. It was seriously yummy!

After lunch we headed over to a karaoke place. Karaoke is huge in Japan and there are lots of places where you can go and rent out room for a few hours and sing to your hearts content. It was a blast! The place had unlimited drinks, we brought snacks and they had thousands of songs to choose from. The kids had so much fun singing so many of the popular songs (and a few of the same ones over and over again). It was loud but such a fun time.

After karaoke we went to the Japanese bathhouse - called Onsen. This is one thing we really wanted to do in Japan and it was a fabulous experience. The bathhouse is split by gender and each side has tons of different baths to get into. The waters are different temperatures and different scents, some indoors and some outside. You cleanse yourself really well before you get in. I don't know how to explain it well but it was amazing and just incredibly relaxing. We spent a few hours enjoying the baths (the guys had taken the littlest kids on their side so it was especially relaxing for the moms). It is probably my favorite experience of the entire trip and so memorable. My kids have talked about it non stop since we got back.

After the baths we headed back for a late night dinner (we ate at about midnight) prepared by the guys. Another great and full day.

An added note. Addison's teacher sent us an email about 2 weeks after we got back from the trip and said that Addison had written a story in class about our trip to Japan. She scanned it and sent it over to us. She had written about our time at the onsen and included several anatomically correct pictures (you onsen with nothing on). She said it is her favorite story she's had a student write in her 20 year teaching career. Super hilarious and we all about died laughing. It's a keeper for sure!

Tokyo-Day 4

One of the things I love about traveling is seeing the differences between cultures in everyday life. I love taking pictures of the random things we see that illustrate those differences. 

We saw lots of cars parked double-decker in residential areas. Space is a premium in Tokyo so this is how they get more cars in tight spaces.

There are vending machines ALL OVER Japan. We were told that there is 1 vending machine for every 5 people in the country. That amounts to millions of vending machines! Most of the machines sell drinks only. The kids loved getting different drinks to try every day. The only thing that was familiar to us was an occasional Coke. Most drinks were unique to Japan.

There are funny signs everywhere! We love this one on an elevator:

Carter and Allen loved this one and had to reenact the "Clash"

Our first stop of the morning was at the Sensoji temple which is the oldest Buddhist temple in Tokyo. This is the gateway to enter into the grounds and called "Thunder Gate." We love the iconic and huge lantern in the background

We didn't see too many people dressed in traditional Japanese clothing but saw a few at the market outside the temple. When I stopped these girls to get their pictures, they were so thrilled and loved talking to me about living in America. On a side note, I LOVED people watching in Japan, particularly seeing how the women dress. They dress immaculately in beautifully tailored clothes. It was such a treat to see! Beautiful bags, shoes, clothing and coats. I was in clothing heaven!

This is the 5 story pagoda inside the gates and it is actually a Shinto shrine.

The cleansing fountain before entering the shrine:

The ceiling of the shrine

Interior of the shrine where the monks were leading the people in prayer:

Inside the shrine was quite dark and most of my pictures did not turn out but it was so fascinating. There were lots of differences between the Japanese and Sri Lankan Buddhist shrines. A couple of the things we loved were getting to pick our fortunes from a huge array of drawers that correspond to a randomly drawn stick. There was also a pagoda filled with incense that when breathed in helped keep evil spirits away.

We loved visiting the shrine and seeing the beautiful and intricate art and religious beliefs in practice.

After visiting the shrine we boarded a boat to take a cruise down the Tokyo river. The river is lined with cherry trees and it was amazing to see the beautiful blossoms along the river. Our crew on the boat:

It was an overcast and chilly day but the blossoms were beautiful:

I loved seeing the replicas of traditional ships along the river:

One of the fun things about this trip is all of the modes of transportation we used to get around Tokyo. We rode in an airplane, took trains, busses, cabs, subways, car, rode on a boat and rode bikes all within the week we were there. Such a fun memory! Here we are crammed onto a bus to go to another stop. 

In front of the Hachiko statue in Tokyo. The story is that this dog waited for his owner for 9 years at this train station after he died. It was a really popular spot and lots of people were taking pictures. 

After a long day on our feet we headed back to the hotel for dinner and some swim time.

We caught a late night bus back to the air force base after 3 days in downtown Tokyo!

Tokyo - Day 3

 On day 3 I convinced everyone to get up at 3:30 a.m. to go to the Tsukiji fish market. Every tour book I looked at about sights to see in Tokyo said this was high on the list of things to do. It was SUPER crazy getting everyone up and over there since it was in the middle of the night. This is the 13 of us standing outside the market and Emery was clearly not happy.  The market has a fish auction every morning and only about 100 tickets are given out to tourists each morning. Despite getting there an hour before the auction started (at the recommendation of the tour books), we missed out on tickets to the auction. I was kind of bummed but we got to walk through the market and see so many amazing things so it was definitely worth it. Plus, it's a great story to tell of our crazy international adventures.

 The market was full of open stalls selling all kind of produce and fish. I also loved all the tiny noodle restaurants that were operating and PACKED full of people in the middle of the night. It was a true slice of Japanese life.

 Teeny, tiny squids

The workers in the market drove these little carts around and they went pretty fast. I've never seen anything like them!

A beautiful mushroom:

Huge edamame pods. These were each several inches long. Much bigger than the pods we have eaten:

After walking around at the market for a couple hours we headed back to the hotel for breakfast and naps. This phone booth was near the hotel and on the way to the subway station. The kids loved cramming into it whenever we walked by

 After breakfast we put the little kids down for naps and a movie on for the older kids and dashed up to the temple to attend a session together. It was awesome to hear the session in Japanese even when we had headphones with the English translation. I loved the decor of this temple. It was very, very sparse and simple but beautiful.

 After the temple we picked up the kids at the hotel and headed out to get some lunch. Elizabeth told me that one of their favorite things to do is pick up food to eat at the "conveni"which is short for convenience store. We bought a ton of different things to try and the food was fantastic! We LOVED the food in Japan and everything was so fresh and delicious. It was definitely different than US convenience store food. It was super interesting that there are convenience stores on almost every block in Tokyo. You might recognize this:

All of us with some of the fun things we got to eat:

Dried fish is a sold everywhere in Japan. We did not try it but it similar to jerky. This was octopus:

 Loved these - rice roll wrapped in seaweed paper and filled with different things. We loved the tuna roll.

My favorite were the shrimp spring rolls:

The warning on this chopstick packaging made us laugh so hard!

After eating lunch we took the subway to the Tokyo tower. It looks similar to the Eiffel tower in Paris and you can go up to the top to get a better view of the city.

When we got to the tower there was a lady outside doing a show with her monkey. We sat and watched her for a long time and it was absolutely delightful. The monkey did all sorts of tricks (walking on stilts, doing tricks, etc). It was so lucky that we were able see the show:

Kids with the monkey after the show. It was so much fun!

At the top of the observation deck they had glass portions in the floor that you could look through. It was super cool and kind of scary!

We loved pretending we were falling!

 The view from the top of the tower! It was so fun to see the cherry trees from up high

Our kids really loved riding all the trains and subways. Emery and Addison especially loved hanging on the straps!

Our final stop of the day was the Imperial Palace. We arrived just as the sun started to set and it was absolutely beautiful. This is one of the palaces that the emperor stays in. I'm so glad we took the time to see it. We got some of the best pictures of this trip at the palace. Loved it!

 After we returned to the hotel and got the kids fed and to bed, the adults went out for a fancy dinner. It was so fun to get some more time together. The food was good and we tried lots of new things. I got a rare tuna steak topped with caviar on a bed of green tea noodles. I loved the tuna but am not exactly a fan of caviar. I did try it though! It must be an acquired taste! Allen had quail and thought it was "interesting." We always love to try new foods and sometimes there are hits and misses. It was such a fun evening and way to wrap up a LONG day!