Day 1: Snoopytown Well, if a toddler can be in complete euphoria, Cait experienced it at Snoopytown. Holy cow, even I was excited to be there! We had a GREAT time! Talk about Snoopy-stuff galore all under one roof.
Also, Snoopytown was only one floor of a massive kingdom called Kiddyland where there was Hello Kitty town, Halloween town, Disney/Pixar town (with the Cars - from the movie), and more Big Kid stuff that I didn't recognize as much.
Five floors of Kid-heaven. It was AWESOME! We got lots of cool stuff and yet I find myself still longing for more. We would make two more trips back there prior to leaving for home.Cait was a real trooper throughout the day. Before leaving Snoopytown, she decided she was tired and said, "Mommy, let's go back to the hotel." So we packed up and headed back, but not before making a quick stop at a local-style sushi joint where lots of locals. This place was a typical "fast food" sushi place that lots of people go to for lunch on their work breaks/whatnot. Everyone sits at a bar that has a conveyor belt of various plates going around in circles around the sushi chef's who stand in the middle. Customers pick the plates with the sushi items they want on them. Cait had 4 plates of edamame (thank goodness it's loaded with protein and good stuff and she loves it!), a custard dish, and a friend/sweet rice sushi item (no raw fish in it). She really enjoyed watching the plates circle around the restaurant and loved shouting out "Here comes more edamame!" when she saw a plateful coming our way. We sat next to an American mother with three kids who had lived there a few years with her husband who works in Tokyo. We talked and the kids recommended the stuff they liked to Cait. Of course, she listened to them more than she listened to me so that's how I got her to try the fried/sweet rice sushi dish. We ended up back at our hotel around 2:30pm to nap.
Thanks to our best buddies, Laura, Anna-Sofia, and Sunniva, here is how Cait and Alpha Dog toured the city: In a super light hike pack!
The famous Harajuku. Note the signage in black and white. I can't imagine seeing this in The States as it borders on profanity there. Am I wrong?
On a final note, Tokyo is VERY kid-friendly. Stores and restaurants always seemed to have some type of cheap, plastic toy behind the register. And the business hotel we stayed at caters mostly to western business travelers and yet they had kiddy toothpaste, toothbrushes, dressing gowns, slippers, sponges, etc. that they left in our room for her on the first night. Here is a photo of her donning all of her items.
A funny side note to the bear-shaped sponge shown in the above photo: The instructions on the package said, verbatim, "You had better use this sponge with body shampoo." From what I understand, the Japanese people are very thankful if you correct their English mistakes. I never offered any linguistic advice to anyone, though, so I have no proof that this is true. My particular favorite was this sign:
If only everyone around the world loved pets this much...Day 2: Asakusa As of the completion of Day 2, the number of people who had asked if I lived in Japan so far was a whopping 4. For some reason, me being obviously non-Asian and toting around a tot in a hike pack on my back while carrying a Japanese-English dictionary among my bags of souvenirs didn't scream TOURIST to many people. One guy even asked me to help him speak to a cashier in Japanese, thinking I could do a better job of it than he could.
Beta Dog had an early meeting this morning with the rest of the day off so we headed to Asakusa, or Old Tokyo. The guide books said this is the place that most resembles Tokyo before it was obliterated in WWII (the way the guide books talk about it, I'm amazed there are any native Japanese people left in Japan following the destruction of WWII). Supposedly, you can see Geishas walking the streets, women in kimonos, pagodas galore, and pause for a rest at a plethora of tea gardens. Feeling more rested, we headed out to Asakusa hoping to enjoy the scenery until at least 3pm.
Asakusa was neat, but extremely commercial and busy. We saw no geishas, no women in kimonos, and only a handful of tea gardens. There were many pagodas, though, and a plethora of cheap, Japanese-trinket shopping for tourists. Little did I know, but Asakusa was the place where I would see the most Western tourists in Tokyo. It was slightly disappointing after reading all of the Guide Book Hype, but fun nonetheless.
There was a restaurant designed specifically to tell you what kind of food it serves...
Proof that we were actually there.
Crowded Asakusa streets...
Shopping-for-trinkets galore...
A pagoda (one of many)...
And another...
And the Grand Pooh-ba of the Pagodas, the worship house...
More pagodas...
A classic Japanese garden...
A neat tree...
The Yogodo Hall...
What's the Yogodo Hall, you ask?
Commercialized? I'd say so with an amusement park in the middle of it.
A bell...
And a cute and very classic tea ceremony restaurant. Needed reservations, so we didn't go in.
One thing I'd heard a lot before coming here was how the movie Lost In Translation was so incredibly accurate for foreigners visiting Japan (a brief synopsis: foreigners feel very out of place because the language barriers are so difficult that there is little mingling with the natives). I learned this to be absolutely NOT true, especially if you bring a cute toddler with you everywhere you go. I educated Cait on the very small bits of Japanese that I know such as 'arigato' for thank you, 'oyasuminasai' for good bye at the end of the night, 'ohayo goizamas' for good morning, and 'tsumetai miruku o kudasai' for cold milk please (you must say cold or they'll bring you a scalding hot glass of milk). Whenever she utters any amount of toddler-botched Japanese, we always heard many high-pitched ooos and ahhhs from the peanut gallery surrounding us. It was quite fun, especially when the men chimed in.Cait had her first tempura meal today - and she enjoyed it! Shrimp tempura, edamame, japanese pickles, and white rice with some sweet stuff on top made her tummy very happy. If nothing else, we'll come home from Tokyo with a new Adventurous Eater! By the way things sound at home with the stock market plummeting and gas prices soaring, how will I ever manage if my grocery bill must go up by having to finally feed a third person in the family who has never really shown much interest in eating before?
Day 3: Shibuya, aka Tokyo Times Square We spent the entire day sans-Beta Dog as he had to spend it earning money for us to spend shopping in a major Sensory Overload section of Tokyo, aka Tokyo Times Square at the Shibuya transit station. Cait and I both spent our entire morning wondering if we should flee! flee! flee! because there were so many people, so much noise, and so much commotion, or if we should stay and watch Chaos in Cooperation in all its glory. The changing of the lights, as the activity is commonly referred to here, was pretty cool. All this means is when the stop lights change at the major Tokyo Times Square intersection, all cars stop moving and people scurry across the streets (at least 6 of them intersect here, maybe more but it was hard to tell since you can't see much in front of you unless you look up) in various directions. I should have brought my video camera as I doubt the photos I took shown below do the experience justice. Try to imagine the next six shots side by side to get an idea of the circular view we had.
Next photo shows the famous (or infamous) changing of the light: All lights turn to red and EVERYONE crosses the streets at once, regardless of whether cars are stuck in the intersection or not. Note the TV screen...how much do you think Beta Dog would love to see a UT game on here?
The amazing part about the entire experience was that if you walk under the subway station to the other side of Shibuya (east?) no more than a block or so, suddenly everything becomes much calmer and clearer again. Or maybe our senses were just in that much shock that we thought ordinary noise was serenity? We had one of the best lunches I think I have ever tasted in my life in Shibuya. Couldn't tell you what it was called though as it was written in Kanji and no one spoke English there.
The people in Tokyo are SO friendly! One man, who spoke no English, approached me thinking I looked confused (and I was) asking if he could help me find something. I told him the place I was looking for. Not knowing where it was, he asked another young passerby to help us. She lead us in the exact opposite direction in which she was heading, perhaps 1/2 mile out of her way, to show us where to go. Of course, she didn't speak English, either, so I tried my best to express my 'arigato gozaimashita' as thankfully as I could. Cait still talks about how nice she was, "She was SO nice to take us to the place!"We returned to the hotel for a nap, which I took while Cait romped around the hotel. This little girl LOVED the hotel!
We headed out around 4pm again and walked the Roppongi area just south of our hotel. Cait did a great job walking all on her own (no stroller or hike pack) and we enjoyed seeing the Tokyo Tower as its orange beams lit up in a pink hue against the spectacular back drop of our first sunset in Tokyo (it had been rainy and cloudy until this afternoon). For a little background, Tokyo Tower was erected after WWII as a symbol of Japanese strength and persistence, as a way of saying, "We're still here even though our skyline isn't."
The sad thing is most of the history in Tokyo is nothing more than a memory since most of the structures were obliterated in the war. They did a good job of recreating these structures, but historically speaking it's always much more fascinating to see the originals than it is to see the duplicates. Most historical sites we visited said, "Original structure build in X year (often 300-400 years ago) and reconstructed (post-WWII)." Quite sad.Day 4: Imperial Palace
Today was the first sunny and beautiful day we'd had so far so Cait and I spent it at a place with a completely opposite scene from high-tech, crazy Shibuya we experienced the day before. The Imperial Palace (of course, completely rebuilt from WWII) is situated in the center of the city surrounded by trees, birds, and lots of tall buildings from afar. Cait missed the beginning of the trip by falling asleep in the stroller, which was fine since she still seemed a bit jet lagged. She was still ogled by onlookers as she snored away in her stroller seat. Asleep, this girl attracts more attention than even the cutest of pugs, amazingly enough.
This is all that remains from the original Imperial Palace (US bombs destroyed the rest).
It's difficult to tell by these photos, but the palace grounds are situated in the heart of Tokyo.
See?
And here is the moat that surrounds it, former protection from intruders.
After Shibuya, Cait enjoyed a little time out of her stroller pushing Snoopy around.
We finished the day with a 'date night' at a super yummy Italian restaurant called Ristorante Il Bianco. She was a VERY good girl and was rewarded with a piece of chocolate cake afterward. Thanks to my excellent navigation skills (and the fact that I was tall enough to see the tops of buildings) we enjoyed a nice stroll through the Akasaka neighborhood streets on the way back to the hotel. Here's my Tokyo-Touring Girl.
Day 5: Ueno Park and Zoo
Ueno is a district of Tokyo that is home to its largest park and zoo. It was very pretty today, with a hint of fall colors beginning to show through.
Cait was confused about being at a park as she constantly asked where the playground was. I had to explain at least 10 times that the word 'park' did not necessarily equate to 'playground'. In the end, we found a tiny tots amusement park where she enjoyed a few rides before seeing the animals at the zoo.
The zoo was very much like Como zoo, nice, but a little run down.
We did get to see a few unique touches like Dholes...
...Japanese style buildings...
...and a cock-of-the-rock bird (who lived up to his name by literally standing on a rock in his cage).
In case you don't believe me about his name...
This guy couldn't take his eyes off of me as I passed his cage. Perhaps, we were the most beautiful people he'd ever seen in his life? Maybe he'd never seen an American before? Or maybe he was just hungry?
And did you know Japan is the home of the world's largest hornet? I kid you not, that yellow-black blur in the middle of the purple flowers is One Big Bee! It's about the size of a small hummingbird - about 2-3" long - and quite venomous.
It's worth it to watch this creepy video and see this photo to learn more about them.There were a lot of familiar-looking birds that looked like black-capped chicadees, robins, and such but took on the name "tit" instead. When Beta Dog returned home that night, I told him about all the nice tits we saw at the zoo. His eyes got so large that I could almost see the wheels turning in his head thinking about how to ask if we'd go back to the zoo so he could see the nice tits, too. I informed him of the truth before torturing him for too long.
My favorite photo of the day was the one I took with of Cait standing next to a woman who was at least 7 feet tall! It was very cute to see my little tyke (who stands at a very proud 38" tall) next to someone WELL over twice her height (possibly twice MY height???).
After such an action-packed morning, we were hungry! We stopped at a very authentic Japanese restaurant where we had to take off our shoes and sit on the floor on pillows. However, en route to the restaurant Cait had fallen asleep in the stroller. By the time we arrived, she was snoring away quite loudly. But, instead of turning us away, the staff actually put a pillow down for Cait and gave her a blanket to keep her warm while I ate! They cooed and looked sweetly at her while she slept and, of course, gave her a little toy for when she woke up. Now THIS is the way to have a luxurious lunch!
We had a spectacular conclusion to the evening - the clouds and sky cleared enough for us to see Mount Fuji from our hotel room! I took pictures, but unfortunately the haziness prevented my photos from turning out well (remember, Tokyo's population is 20+ million).Day 6: Yanaka
I believe I will write to the guide books and tell them that encouraging a visit to Asakusa as Old Tokyo is indeed incorrect. We went to an area called Yanaka today and it was WAY better than Asakusa! Much more 'old town' and 'local' feeling and, as usual, very friendly. Of course, prior to actually enjoying Yanaka, we had to first find it. Having trouble getting our bearings with the very nondescript map we had brought with us, we asked a passerby if he could help to orient us by directing us to the nearest Metro subway station. He graciously showed us the way, directing us a mere 10 feet! Little did we know, we were standing right next to it! Obviously, we felt quite foolish and had to take a photo to mark the occasion. To our credit, the station looked just like the entrance to a shop with very little advertisement or sensationalism to indicate there was a massive web of subway lines running beneath us.
Yanaka is the kind of place where people live upstairs and run their businesses downstairs. We know because we had to make an emergency bathroom stop for Cait at one place where the guy graciously brought us into his house to use his bathroom. We got a few of the neatest trinkets we'd seen on the entire trip from this area.
Lots of fruit, fish, and veggie markets, authentic trinkets, restaurants, and tea shops/houses here to give you a feeling of being in a Truly Japanese environment.
And plenty of small streets for all of the little cars and bikes that utilize them. SUVs are few and far between in Tokyo!
Beta Dog was with us today, which made things somewhat easier and somewhat more difficult. In his usual Management Way, he needed a timeline for our activities, exact directions to our destinations, and wanted to know exactly what we were to expect along the way. I kept having to inform him that, just like him, I had never been to Tokyo before and that we would be experiencing this for the first time together. He eventually left his managerial ways behind for the day and settled down to enjoy a little piece of Tokyo. I believe this meant he desperately needed a break after working like a dog all week for his clients. Actually, if you think about the dogs in our house, working like them would be a remarkably wonderful way to earn a living since they do very little around the house. Maybe the phrase 'working like a dog' is a poor choice of words here. Beta Dog has really been working HARD this week! See?
We returned to the hotel for a short break where I relaxed and indulged in a little more hot green tea while watching the Red Sox/Angels game on TV. One good thing about Japanese television, there is always a baseball game on, even if it's not broadcast in English.Tonight, we'd hoped to make it to an Iron Chef restaurant later in the evening. A 5pm reservation should have been early enough for Cait to be a reasonably good girl but with jet lag still lingering in all of us it was just late enough to find ourselves rejecting the idea as we'd likely need to scarf down our food and scramble from the restaurant with a screaming toddler en tow. So, we allowed Cait to complete the nap she had begun in her stroller on the way home from Yanaka (see? Subway travel, even for local toddlers, can be quite exhausting)...
...and decided to take Beta Dog to the yummy Il Bianco Italian restaurant Cait and I went to on Day 4. A decision well made as 1) it was so yummy, 2) Cait was tired, 3) Cait needed to eat 'normal' food she'd enjoy, and 4) I was too tired to dress up all fancy-schmanzy and deal with a tired toddler. Beta Dog enjoyed it thoroughly.
Day 7: One Last Visit to Snoopytown and Shibuya
A rather uneventful day today. We returned to Omote-Sando and Snoopytown for one last look around (they completely changed their stock so it was like a different store - yeah! more stuff to buy!) and show Beta Dog Shibuya, the Tokyo Times Square, and a taste of high-end Japanese shopping culture. Cait became thoroughly bored with the shopping part of things and she was very much looking forward to going home. Can't say I blame her. By today, I was pooped! My best night of solid sleep during the entire trip had been about 5 hours; last night I think I got about 3...with sunrise at 5:15am Cait was up at 5:30am each morning pulling the curtains open and saying, "It's light outside! Time to wake up!" And when Beta Dog couldn't sleep, he'd turn on his computer, waking me up with it's bright blue light blazing from the screen. It was time for my own bed with my stinky Jake on the floor next to me and a cuddly warm Oti-heater next to me - and a toddler in her OWN room!
We finally made it to the Iron Chef restaurant tonight - our last night in Tokyo. On our way out, we got to see a taste of Japanese theatre culture right outside our hotel.
The men greeted each other quite formally...
...and the women dressed for the occasion. I guess the kimono is the American version of the cocktail dress at such social affairs?
And while we didn't make it to the restaurant of Iron Chef Masahiko Kobe (there was a 2-week wait!), we did get to Iron Chef Chen Kenichi's Chinese restaurant, Shisen Hanten. True to his glamorized television stint, his food was absolutely phenomenal with even the most delectable vegetable fried rice a tot has ever tasted in her young little life.We flew home the next day sans Beta Dog, who needed to work a few days longer. It may seem like a short trip, but it was plenty for Cait and me. We were pooped! I managed to snap a few shots of the Tokyo harbor on the bus ride back to the airport.
The flight home was uneventful thanks to bulkhead seating and Cait taking a 6-hour snooze on the floor while I watched the latest Indiana Jones movie.
Ahh, there is a God!
