This morning Isaac and I volunteered at Kids' Food Basket, which meant Joshua didn't get out of the house. While I'm not a stickler for the "you need to get out of the house every weekday" rule, I do try to enforce it. Joshua decided to combine going outside with writing a poem on the driveway.
"I am chalk. I can't go for a walk. It's up to you if I can talk For I am chalk.
The sky is getting dark. I can 't hear a dog bark. The rain is starting. I am fading."
Horizon always comes into the kitchen when I'm making dinner, hoping for a treat. (He rarely gets one.) Today he hung out on the black step stool for a surprisingly long time. I wanted to put more dishes in the dishwasher, but also didn't want to move him. Needless to say, dishes didn't get in the dishwasher but I did remember to put sheets on the bed.
Although it was late when we got out of TeamLab - it really did take the 3-4 hours that on-line suggested - we decided to go to Sky Tower. This was one of the things we really wanted to do and Travis wanted to see it at night. So off we went.
The Sky Tree is the third tallest structure in the world, as of 2024, and was the tallest for a while starting in 2011. (Wikipedia)
Getting to the tower was a bit odd; we went the the fourth floor in a shopping plaza and then outside for a bit and then back inside to the tower.
We walked all the way around (360deg) and the view looked similar from everywhere; buildings as far as the eye could see. For several minutes I thought that the grey thing was an overhang just blocking the view to the horizon but I was completely wrong. To be fair, the greater Tokyo area is the most populous area with 41 million residents. (Wikipedia)
The river showed up especially well at night time. If you look closely you can also see the Ferris Wheel that we saw at Disney.
The highest point that we could reach!
A glass floor to see how high up you really are.
Everyone was getting rather tired by this time. We started to look for food, but had poor luck. /they were either full (Kirby restaurant) or needed cash (street food). We finally found a pork katzu restaurant that was good. Not as good as the other place, but decent. The waiter looked at us very strangely when we asked for water, but the tea that was served (Oolongcha) at all the meals was not to anyone's liking. Travis texted us a few minutes later and noted that in some believe that water with a meal will make it harder to digest your food. How this is different from the tea, we weren't really sure.
We found a taxi to take us back to the hotel and it was the longest taxi ride ever. Joshua literally couldn't keep his eyes open, so after fighting to stay awake for five minutes I told him to go to sleep. Isaac ended up falling asleep. What should have been a thirty minute ride took about forty-five minutes because the taxi driver didn't take the toll road and hit every. single. red light. We would go a block and then wait two minutes. It was ridiculous. But we made it to the right place and everyone quickly went to bed.
Today we visited the new rock climbing gym in Holland. While we are loyal Scrapyard members, but there were some nice things about this new gym too.
*The mats weren't as cushiony. It made me even more scared to fall...but really, I don't like falling period.
*The routes were more spread out.
*They use a circuit method instead of V scale. It isn't really much different, but it did work well for Joshua.
*It was really empty when we arrived. They have some morning hours, which I do like. (It was actually almost too empty.)
*The holds and walls are new, so their texture is still rough. This can be nice and not nice all at the same time.
*It was air conditioned. While this can be nicer, Scrapyard opens up the garage doors for fresh air when it is nice out; rock climbing gyms tend to have very poor air quality due to all the chalk dust, so the fresh air is better.
It was a nice gym, which makes me feel a little guilty. However, the first time at a gym can be extra nice because it's all new routes that haven't been tried before. Scrapyard has a nice community though, and Isaac is part of the climbing team which makes all the difference.
Also, I can't believe that we have two rock climbing gyms within ten minutes of our house when most of the country doesn't have one within an hour.
We caught a bird in our garage for a minute.
We worked on decluttering the garage for an hour. It's a bit hard to tell that we made any progress, but we definitely did. I'm not sure whose wise idea it was to do this in the summer.
Isaac made dinner tonight! And when I say he made dinner, he made all of the dinner. I only found the recipe for baked oatmeal that I use and I scooped out the oatmeal at the end because I know how much everyone should have. He even cleaned up the kitchen after himself! Joshua added to the dinner by giving me a Lego carrot.
Isaac cleaned out his treat box; Joshua and I took advantage of it and snagged several snacks that he didn't want anymore.
We went on a walk with Cheryl. I had a great time, but the kids had bug problems.
In the afternoon we went strawberry picking. Luckily Jonathan and Elizabeth were happy to join us; neither of us would have gone without the other. The strawberries are delicious! The weather was better than expected; there was a nice breeze and it was partly cloudy.
We went to church this morning and there is construction on the way, which requires a detour.
We took seven left turns* and one right turn to get there. The imbalance seemed really odd to me since church is about 1.25 miles from our house.
It was also Father's Day! I have lots of great dads in my life.
Ben is a wonderful dad for many reasons, but today it was because he patiently helped Joshua be the bad pirate as we played Treasure Island this afternoon. Joshua has wanted to be the bad pirate for a while, but it's a role in which other players can't help as much.
*A turn being defined as an intersection, not a spot where the road is curvy.
Travis and Scarlet went back to Tokyo super, super early! I think they chose the 6am train because Scarlet wanted to do some of the Tokyo things that we did earlier. We stuck around a bit more. The hotel breakfast was delicious and staying for that was totally worth it. And then we took the 4.5hr train ride back to Tokyo.
We had a lot of luggage, but it was workable - everyone had a backpack and a carry-on sized suitcase. I had an additional blue backpack that fit well on the carry-on handles to carry some of our extra souvenirs.
The train ride was...fine. At one point Joshua told me he wasn't feeling well and that's always scary in public places, but he rested a bit and started to feel better. For a snack we had these triangle things that were all over the place; Ben said they were a dallop of flavored red bean paste in a square of dough folded over into a triangle. The red bean paste was good, but it was a lot of dough that didn't have a yummy part with it. Mount Fuji was clear again!
Getting to our hotel was a bit of an adventure; we were definitely out of the main area. We needed to carry our luggage up and down steps at the train station and the hotel room was small with three beds. This is what I was expecting most of the hotel rooms to be like. There wasn't really even enough room to lay out our suitcases and walk around. However, we didn't really need it to be much bigger either, so it worked well.
There didn't seem to be a ton of restaurant options nearby, so we went to a 7-11. This is a normal thing to do, so it is definitely a cultural experience. Everyone was a bit hangry by this time, but we survived. There were a bunch of microwaves so that Ben and I could heat up our food; Isaac and Joshua got food from the food warmer. It was good. It wasn't great, but it filled us up and we were happy again.
We went over to the other teamLab installation next. Our taxi driver dropped us off in a fine spot, but it was in the basement off a shopping plaza and we had a bit of a hard time finding it. The picture below only works on a phone. When you're just walking through the hallway the words are stretched out and 3D. This one, as a whole, as a lot more artsy and less focused on movement. I think I liked the other one a bit better, but this one still had some really cool moments.
We started off with a ball run where the balls and surrounding lights all changed color over time.
All of the walls were interactive and regularly changed. This added to the feeling of not really knowing where you are and if you've hit all the mini installations...borderless. It was nice and not so nice at the same time. Below there were groups of butterflies that if you touched them they fell to the ground.
We made our own ocean creatures. Scarlet's escaped a half hour later and we saw it in a different hallway.
I made the green, blue, and orange fish, all filled with circles.
Joshua made a smiley-face jellyfish.
Isaac made a submarine shark. It was a cool idea, but the shark outline still showed up and he was disappointed about that.
Ben made the stripped shark in the middle.
This was a peaceful room. A place to sit. Water when we were there, but it changed over time.
This is the same room as above, but the cool part is that we had a color version and the outside hallway had the black and white version.
On our way out of this we walked by a wall. EXCEPT THERE WAS A HOLE! Ben took a video of it and it was just clever projection, although it doesn't show up well in the video. We were all amazed at how much it messed with our minds.
We were at the Tea Room, which was billed as a must-do experience. However, everything was Macha flavored and I'm the only person in the family who enjoys tea and Macha. (Honestly though, Macha is a weird flavor. I put it in my mouth and don't like it, but then a second later I decide that I do like it. Every time.) I enjoyed two servings of macha ice cream and my tea while everyone else enjoyed the cool things that happened to the food.
When you set down your ice cream, a branch grows from it. When you set down your tea, a flower grows in it and then when you move your tea the petals all come off.
They had the same light rope installation as the previous teamLab. This was a really, really cool installation, but a bit disappointing to see it again. However, Scarlet found the app that controlled the lights and so we were able to add some "trees" and "light fields" and "fires" to the lights.
There was a really cool room with globes of lights. The lights changed color slightly, but not enough to change the overall white look
This is in front of a one-way mirror. As we were entering the exhibit it was funny to watch the people near the wall pose very un-self-consciously. They had forgotten there were people behind the mirror.
There were a few other smaller rooms - one included people displayed on walls of 'smoke'. So you could walk right through them! The people were traditional Japanese images, which was interesting but I didn't understand any of the history.
Then a lilypad field. I guess not lily pads, but white plates on sticks and the projection changed as you walked through the field.
We were getting towards the end when we ran into a large room. It had blue lines on the floor and I won't tell you how long it took me to figure them out. They followed movement patterns of the people walking around. So Joshua made a really tight circle, and then Isaac and Scarlet joined to make a few other patterns.
