Tuesday: field trip

Today was Joshua's 4th grade trip to Lansing and I went as a chaperone.  While there were many similarities to Isaac's, there were a bunch of differences too.

First of all, we had a bus.  I'm not sure I would have gone if we needed to drive.  I know it isn't that far, but it isn't my favorite thing to do.  Anyway, the bus was really nice.

We were on time!  This meant we got to see the whole capital tour instead of just 2/3rds of it.  However, congress wasn't in session and so it wasn't as busy or quite as interesting.  The docent for the tour kept emphasizing how we had to be really quiet so they don't get complaints.  Ok, I get it.  At the very end she was looking down a hallway (presumably with actual workers) and said we had to be extra quiet.  The fourth graders did a great job.  One of the students in the high school class that was with us went "lalalala" and the docent came back and glared at the 4th graders.  Kind of funny, kind of not.

Next we went the museum.  Last time a docent walked us through a large part of it; this time we were on our own.  I tried to keep my group somewhat slow; we had over an hour and the only thing that happened if we went quickly was more time waiting.  We ended up being the last group out (just by a bit) and it worked perfectly.  I thought the kids did a pretty good job engaging with the exhibits.

Lunch was fine.

We also got to go to the Supreme Court, which wasn't on the schedule for Isaac's trip.  I thought the docent did a very nice job and there was some nice interaction on how a court room worked.  That being said, the kids were also starting to be a little done with listening.

I realized what a joy it is to have kids that listen.  How they ask if they can do xyz and then do as expected or ask a reasonable follow-up question.  (Can I get my ball out?  No?  Ok, can I get it out when we go outside?)  How I can expect to go into a gift shop and not have them go crazy.  I know some of that is that we know each other, but it is good to be able to trust them.

The other big difference with this field trip is that Joshua interacted with his peers a ton more than Isaac did.  He didn't sit next to me on the bus.  He didn't eat lunch next to me.  He walked by me sometimes, but not always.  It was different, but good.

Monday: e-Foil

We got Ben out on his e-Foil today for the first time.  It was a bit of an ordeal getting it to the beach, but there are plans to make that easier in the future.  It was a lovely night.

Thursday: life

This morning I went on a walk with Cheryl.  There were a lot of ducks.

 

I went rock climbing with Isaac after his math class.  He's had a lot of work lately but has really been doing a great job managing it.  During rock climbing he decided to show me something he thinks is a figure 4.  It was interesting to watch him move his legs all around, but especially when he decided to do it one-handed.  There was a different pink route that we watched a few people do without their feet in the cave (i.e., hands only).  So he decided to do it and totally crushed it.  Everyone was excited for him.

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.