vacation Wednesday: Disney Sea

The next day dawned clear!

We easily got up for breakfast, and, while we needed to run back to the room once or twice, made our way over to the entrance to Disney.

We got there about 30-45 minutes before anyone was let in and at least an hour before the park opened and we were still pretty far back in line.  To be fair, Disney is always pretty good at managing crowds and we got into the park fairly quickly once it actually opened.  Ben immediately got us our first fast pass and continued to do a great job with them for the rest of the day, so that we were able to ride almost every interesting ride that we wanted.  The exception was the Frozen ride, which was going down for maintenence the next day.  It's fast passes were sold out before we got into the park and the line tended to be 3-4 hours long.  Please note there will be spoilers in the descriptions below.

First was Journey to the Center of the Earth.  This was was unexpectedly fun.  I was expecting a rather slow ride, as it started just by looking at pretty crystals and neon animals.  But then you run into a big rock worm and need to run for your life!  You're in the dark and then suddenly there is a little but steep hill in the bright sunshine as you escape.

Next was Peter Pan.  This one also ended up being so much cooler than we were expecting.  In Florida it is a very tame ride where you fly around and enjoy the story.  Due to the glasses, screen, and that this ride moved the boat all around, it felt like we were lifting off and flying.  However, with this ride especially we realized how nice it is to be able to understand the story that the audio is saying.  Sure, we have an idea, but throughout Disney it felt especially pronounced.  

Next was a loop coaster!  It was Joshua's first loop.  He was not a fan.  Isaac was also not a fan, but because the coaster was too tame.  It's a bit too bad because this coaster had a single rider line so we probably could have done it again rather quickly.  Near the bottom of the coaster there was a bunch of mist and I enjoyed going through that.  Hmm...I think there was a fire and water theme to the ride.

We had a few minutes before we could line up for the next ride, so we hung out under a rock bridge.  Isaac of course started to climb the walls.  Literally.

The ride up next was Rapunzel.  Honestly, I enjoyed it.  It was, however, a slow ride with a lot of audio in Japanese and the rest of the family didn't really enjoy it.  I got to sit by Ben and the room the the lanterns was beautiful.

(photo credit)

Lunch time! Ben, once again on top of planning, had us all order lunch through the app while waiting in one of the lines.  We were almost late to our order as they only give you a ten minute window, but we made it.  We went with pizza and fries along with some special drinks and donuts.  The pizza had a different type of sauce that what I'm used to, but it was still good.  The drinks were fun.  The donuts...the chocolate one was ok, but the strawberry one was really good.  It was opposite of what I was expecting, but donuts are always fun.  We had some of the fries, but they were just normal fries and everything else was better.

We had a bit of time before our next ride and we wanted the food to settle a bit.  Joshua really wanted a Baymax something.  We looked in one shop and found one or two things but decided to go to one other shop too.  The second shop only had Baymax!  Probably because we were in Tokyo and Big Hero 7 is set in New Tokyo.  He ended up with a little shoulder hugger.  It didn't stay on his shoulder very well, so it went on assorted spots on his shirt throughout the rest of the day.

Tower of Terror was next!  This was Isaac's favorite ride in Florida, although Ben warned us that it was a little more tame than the one in Florida.  Joshua was nervous about this one too, and I'm delighted to say that he chose to sit next to me again!  When asked why, he said, "Mom is more comforting."  Score.  We sat down in our elevator (after a long dialogue in which we couldn't tell what was being said) and Joshua grabbed onto the arm rests.  I grabbed on right behind his hands with just a little touch..."I'm here" the touch said.  The ride got started and I made sure to laugh.  By the middle, Joshua seemed to be doing ok so I moved my hand back...only to have his hand follow mine back too.  Aww.  I saw some smiles by the end, and he was excited as we exited.  Phew.  (We're in the upper right of the picture below.  The QR code wasn't working, but this picture shows enough.)  Which reminds me!  One of the biggest differences about this park, besides the language, was that most rides didn't let you out in a gift store.  You just walked right back into the park.  Honestly, I'm not sure if I liked it or not.  It is sometimes fun seeing merch related to the ride you just went on, even if you walk through it quickly.  It is also easy to find the perfect souvenir without having to go to lots of stores. 

The Indiana Jones ride was probably my favorite.  We were jerked around in our car, narrowly escaped a fire trap (that was quite warm), and just as we were about to get rolled over by a boulder, the ground dropped out from under us creating an escape path.  We were saved!

The last new ride was Journey to the Center of the Earth.  We got into a submarine, went underwater, were chased by a sea monster, and saved by some fish people.  As with several of the rides, we didn't get any of the actual story and had to figure it out from the props.  A cool ride, but it would have been better if we could have understood it.

The last big ride we went on was Toy Story.  It's the same ride as Florida, but it's a fun one.  Ben got the high score, but we'll assume that's because he rode by himself.  There were also army men hopping around outside; Cheryl wanted us to get a picture with them because we often hide army men in her house.

We weren't quite sure what to do next.  It was getting close to 5pm.  The rides that we liked the most had semi-long lines still - 45 to 80 minutes long - and we weren't sure we wanted to wait that long.  The gondolas were close and said at 15 minute wait.  By the time we got to them it was a half hour, but there was at least seating in the queue.  While in line we dealt with some dumb app stuff but managed to get dinner ordered.  The ride itself was super peaceful.  Maybe not really worth a 30 minutes wait, but a fifteen minute wait for sure.

The restaurant that was nearby had alien mochis, and these were on the list of "the best food from this Disney location".  They were good and super fun.  They all had different creams in the center: chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla/custard.

It was threatening rain, everyone was getting tired, and the fun ride queues weren't any shorter.  We decided to head back to the hotel.  Once there, Isaac crashed so fast and so hard!  He couldn't even stand up while waiting for his turn in the bathroom, quickly got in bed, and was out by 6:30pm.  It was a good thing we didn't stay in the park any longer.

We were able to see the Ferris wheel lit up from our bedroom.  The lights were always moving and changing colors.

Tuesday: chicken

So after eating a lot of chicken at restaurants that is more tender than I can ever make it, I finally looked it up.  There are a lot of ways to make it more tender, but the last few times I've tried putting baking soda on it for twenty minutes before cooking and it actually seems to be working very well.

Tornado has also been sitting on my lap more than normal the last few days.

Monday: little things

It didn't really feel like I got much done today, but a lot of my tasks were small so I at least crossed off a lot of tasks.

I had coffee with Pat; that was lovely as always.

Joshua had made an escape room out of Lego this weekend and we did the puzzles tonight.  There were five puzzles and we had to find a gem in each.  The first one was a 'pool of water', so I tried to quickly flip it over so that it was easier to find the gem.  It only kind of worked and so little dots went all over the place.  After we finished the escape room we were playing around a bit and Ben purposefully spilled the dots toward me saying, "Oops!"  We all laughed.

vacation Tuesday: shopping

Today was planned to be an easy day.  Easy is a relative term. :)  We could have slept in, but everyone was moving pretty early, maybe 6:30?  I think I slept better than the previous night because we turned on some white noise and remember to close the shades, but it still wasn't great.  That's pretty much the story of all the sleep...I got a sufficient amount, 5-6 hours, but it may have been interrupted and I probably woke up early.

Anyway.  Ben had a plan!  We would train over to the Nintendo store, which was close to a Pokemon store and a Minecraft pop-up.  We'd also stop by Don Quijote, an everything store, eat pork katsu for lunch (yum!) and finally go to a famous street for crepes.  Sounds good!

Before we checked out I took some pictures of the room.  Children older than 6yrs old aren't allowed to sleep in the same bed as anyone else, which was a bit of a shock to us when Ben was booking hotels.  It also meant that all the room arrangements were interesting and unique.

This hotel had bunk beds.  It was also apartment like, so there was a big table, seating, and a mini-kitchen.

This was the day it also decided to rain all day.  It wasn't a hard rain, but it was consistent.  Luckily, the hotel had umbrellas that we could borrow.  It was actually rather interesting seeing all the umbrellas out and about.  Everyone had one, and 90% were the same style and 85% were the same type too - a clear umbrella.  All the stores had umbrella baggers.  In some of the other places we went there were umbrella lockers, which was just a grid of circles with locks that you could place your umbrella handle in.

Ok, the first place we visited was the Nintendo store, mostly because they opened first.  We (and by we I mean Ben) navigated the trains to the right stop and we got off at a pretty large station.  We started heading to our destination, only to realize that we were in the middle of an iconic location, Shibuya Crossing.  This is the crossing where all the people walk at once and you can walk diagonally too.  It is estimated to be the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world.  When we were there it was definitely busy, but it didn't stand out as crazy busy compared to the locations we were just at.  Everyone crossed, no one hit anyone else, and we were again on our way.  The photo is from Travis, who was there later in the week.  

Nintendo was on the sixth floor, but there was a cute little outside escalator to use and get up to them.  The guys had all recently played Zelda so we got several Zelda items, along with some little side plates from Mario.

Surprisingly, at least to me, the Pokémon store was right next door!  While interesting, nothing grabbed our attention.  There were some cute stuffies, but everyone decided those wouldn't be a great idea.  Joshua because he already had enough and me because of luggage constraints.

Even more surprising was that the Minecraft pop-up store was right next to these stores too!  It was nice not to have to walk too far between them, and it let us look at all the stores before making a final decision.

It was lunch time and we were all hungry after waking up early, so we went to the pork katsu place.  It was delicious.  I had pork katsu a few other times while there, but this one was by far the best.  Everyone enjoyed their meal, including Joshua.  It was pretty funny though, because he kept calling it 'chicken'.  "Can you cut up my chicken?"  "I'll have a little more chicken."  "This chicken is pretty good!"  To be fair though, it is somewhat like chicken nuggets.  I think I'm going to have to try and make this at home, because it's just delicious.

After our hunger was sated once again, we moved on to Don Quijote.  This is described as a discount megastore.  There were seven stories.  We walked around floor one and picked up a few things.  Then we spent quite a bit of time on floor two, groceries.  The idea of bringing food home is appealing because it won't just sit and get dust.  (Not that it is bad to get other items too, but useful items have a strong appeal to me now.)  

The last stop of...this part of the day...was Takeshita Street.  Known for it's desserts, it also had a lot of shopping too.  We started with crepes.  Hindsight being 20/20, we would probably not get these again.  Well, we would not get one with ice cream in the rain.  Ok, I'll back up.  We got two.  An apple cinnamon one and a chocolate strawberry cheesecake gelato one.  The apple one was pretty good, although you had to eat a fair amount of crepe plain before getting to the toppings.  The ice cream one did not have the toppings well distributed, started to melt, and was generally hard to eat, especially while holding an umbrella and standing up.  We still enjoyed it, but would make different choices if we're ever back there.

Right across the street were the other two stores we wanted to go to.  The first was a ¥100 store.  It was pretty much like a dollar store, but there were some manual fans that Joshua had talked about earlier.  So he grabbed one of those.  Then we went to the capsule store right next door.  We have capsule machines in the US, but it's usually just 20 machines in a grocery store.  I tried to find a number, but I would guess that there were at least 2000 machines.  Joshua loved these.  Isaac picked out several too but didn't open them until we got home...he got a cool light up jellyfish and a grey cat and a slug with curry on it.

We made our way back to the hotel, picked up our luggage, and took a taxi over to our next hotel.  It was near Disney (next day) and was significantly cheaper than the other hotels because it was kind of out-of-the-way from the rest of Tokyo.

Let me tell you how surprised we were when we saw our room.  We were not expecting four twin beds.  It was still hazy from the rain, but had a nice view.

We relaxed for just a bit and Cheryl showed up as she was going to join us for Disney the next day!  We all ate dinner together in our room and went to bed.  Right after we had gotten into the room I had arranged suitcases and unpacked just a little bit.  (I couldn't handle the chaos of the last hotel again.)  Ben had stuff in some other suitcases, so I took it out and put it in the bathroom.  We then had a funny conversation:
B: where's my toiletries bag?

A: in the bathroom

B: where's the something else?

A: in the bathroom

B: where's my toothbrush?

A: in the bathroom

B: I can't find it.  

A: um.. *GASP* I threw it out.

B: why would you do that?

A: so that your replacement was already in the bathroom.

In seriousness though, my sleep-fogged brain had a reason.  When packing up, Ben's toiletry bag was already packed.  (I may have been the one that packed it.)  There was still a toothbrush by the sink.  Isaac had originally had an extra toothbrush in his bag, so I figured he had taken it out for some reason.  I threw it away because I didn't have a good spot for it as things were almost packed and it was extra.  Obviously.

 

Saturday: sleeping

Hmm, two nights ago I got to sleep at about the right time and slept through the night, waking up with my alarm.  It's been a while since I haven't been awake before the alarm.

But then this morning happened.  I couldn't get to sleep last night until about 3am.  Then I woke up at 9:30am, significantly later than normal, because our fan timer turned off the fan.  Ten minutes later Joshua woke me up because he thought it was 11:30...the basement clock hadn't been fixed after yesterday's surprise power outage.

I talked with him a bit and had breakfast, and then laid down on the couch.  I probably fell asleep, but Ben got up soon afterwards so it wasn't for long.  As normal, we worked on our Lego sets after breakfast.  I got about half way through my first bag and laid down on the floor, by the warm fire, and fell asleep.

When everyone was done I woke up again and followed people upstairs.  I gave some instructions and laid down on the bed and ...promptly fell asleep again.  Ben woke me up for a late lunch.

Oh well.  Maybe tomorrow will be better.

vacation Monday1: Mount Fuji

Today Ben arranged a private tour to Mount Fuji.  The driver would pick us up from our hotel, drive us around, and then bring us right back to the hotel.  Reviews were mixed on how much the driver would talk and how much English they would know, but we also figured that this would be a semi-relaxing activity for our first day in Japan.

We left at 7am.  The driver said he had been there since 6:30am and we had been waiting a bit in the room, but oh well.  The pre-arranged time was 7am.  It was also still the last day of Golden Week, which we had mistakenly thought was Sunday.  However, when we looked at the streets right before 7am they were surprisingly empty - only about three people and zero cars.  The driver was a bit worried about traffic, but hoped that since we did leave by 7am it shouldn't be too bad.

And on the way there, it wasn't.  There were a few delays but only about a half hour total, the longest one due to an accident.  The driver was pretty talkative and we got some great initial glimpses of Mount Fuji.

We got to the first place: Chureito Pagoda.  There are a total of 400 steps to walk up to get to the pagoda.  After the first hundred there are some food stands and a scenic lookout.  We hit the timing perfectly!  In May at 8am the chances are only ~30% to have a clear sighting.  By 9am as we were leaving this area the clouds were starting to roll in, and by the time we left in the afternoon there were a lot of clouds.

The kids were hungry, so Joshua got a cheese hot dog (aka large mozzerella stick) and Isaac ventured out and tried some takoyaki, or fried octopus balls.  I had two of them also, and they were very good.  The octopus was well chopped up, so the whole thing just kind of melted in your mouth.

Then we climbed the rest of the steps.  I thought I was in shape, but it turns out I am not in shape for steps.  We'll pretend it's because I was carrying the backpack, but we all know that wasn't the real reason.  Luckily, there was a drinking fountain at the top and we were able to refill the water bottles.

While I rested, I made Joshua take some pictures.

Then it was a few more steps to the best scenic outlook.  However, this place was so crazy crowded.  We got our pictures but didn't really stay around long to enjoy the view.

The way down was much better and still very pretty.

Next we went to a market.  They had assorted foods to taste test and a small koi pond which had mostly grey koi.  The food testing was interesting; the koi not as much.  The tasting worked well, and we bought a few of the items.  We had a few minutes before we needed to meet up with our tour guide, so we got a bottle of juice.  First of all, vending machines are everywhere.  As in, every half block.  Ben was trying to get a different brand of peach juice but it wasn't working well and then he pushed the wrong button and ended up with this brand, Mog-good, of grape juice.

In the end, and oddly enough, this drink ended up being one of my favorite parts of the trip.  It turns out there are small coconut jellies, a.k.a. "chewies", in the drink.  They don't distract from the drink, but they are unexpected.  Isaac was laughing so hard about them.  Everyone else was laughing with him but also at the chewies in their mouths.  I think Joshua had six at one point.

What ended up being our last stop was Lake Kawaquchiko.  (We were going to go somewhere for ice cream too but traffic was terrible.  So we turned around, got some ice cream from 7eleven, and went home.)

First we had a boat ride.  You can see that the clouds were moving in quickly on Mount Fuji.

I really like how you can see cloud shadows on mountains.

After the boat ride we had lunch - we ended up at an Indian restaurant.  Oh, but the food was good.  There was great naan, the curries weren't too spicy, and even Joshua enjoyed it.  Amazingly, it only came out to about $30 for all of us.

So, like I said, we headed back home after that.  The kids and I more or less fell asleep, but Ben stayed awake and talked with the driver.  The highway traffic was terrible, so for a bit they were taking back roads, only to come across three vending machines in the middle of nowhere.  It turns out they're for a factory, and the compromise was to have them by the road for the workers.

We were all exhausted when we got back to the hotel, but since it was barely 5pm we needed to keep moving.  There was a rock climbing place about a 15 minute walk away, so we went there.  Unfortunately, by the time we got there elementary kids couldn't climb anymore.  (Although I don't think Joshua was too heart-broken.)  Ben stayed with Isaac and I went exploring with Joshua.

We'll start with Ben and Isaac.  First of all, rental shoes are always no good.  I heard "so much" about how bad they were it made me decide that if there's even a slight chance of rock climbing on vacations in the future, we should at least bring shoes for Isaac.  There were four floors of climbing!  (Although Tokyo is a city that builds up, so it makes sense.)  The last floor was outside on the roof.  Isaac spent a little time on each floor, but the most time on the third.  He mentioned that several of the walls, especially on the third floor seemed very short.  That doesn't change the difficulty, but is an interesting observation.

Joshua and I just took a walk.  I googled "gift shop" and we headed that way.  The gift shop was mostly just foods, although we found some differently flavored kit kat.  I remembered then that Japan is known for lots of different kit kat flavors, so we got lemon lime.  It was in a shopping plaza, so we walked around a bit.  Joshua picked out a dragon miniature and it was the first time that we were in a bit crowd with lots of lights.  After a bit, we can only shop so much, we navigated back.  Isaac wasn't quite done, so we walked up and down the less busy street looking for Mog-good.  We didn't find any, but it was an interested exploration.  I love how Joshua is always up for walking around to explore and just seeing what we find.

We still hadn't had dinner, but Ben had spotted a Ramen place close to our hotel.  It was really good, but it was also a lot of ramen.  We filled up but didn't get close to finishing.  (And again, prices were incredibly reasonable!)

We got back to the hotel and were understandably exhausted, but this time we could go to bed for real.

Thursday: excitement

It's our anniversary!  Due to all the Japan excitement we didn't do much, although we did go out for dinner with Ben's family.

Severe thunderstorms were predicted for the evening.  Then around 10:15pm, just as I was becoming exhausted and ready for bed, a thunderstorm warning with high winds came through, suggesting a shelter in place.  Well, I learned my lesson from spring break two years ago and promptly went upstairs to get people.  Then, as we were just sitting down in the office the thunderstorm warning came through.  So we all moved to the basement bathroom.  Then Ben found a tornado tracker and the estimated cone went right over our house...so we moved to the basement storage room.  We had Tornado the cat with us, but Horizon the cat couldn't be found and we left him to fend for himself.

We settled in after reminding the kids that we don't get huge tornados and we have insurance, so even if a tornado hits us it will be just a large pain to deal with rather than a catastrophe.  At this point my adrenaline was racing while my eyes were exhausted, so I was in great shape.  It was a good thing that I've cleaned out the storage room so much so that we actually had a place to sit.