Tokyo Highland Games

They say you can find anything in Tokyo if you look hard enough. Even if what you are looking for is a bit outlandish, say, something like, I don't know, a crowd of people where the European faces outnumber the Asian, you can understand the majority of the conversations you are overhearing, and there are lots of large men wearing kilts. And even though I was not one of the large men wearing kilts, I did feel right at home. For one afternoon at least, I was not a head taller than everyone, and my last name fit nicely with the day's festivities.

There were a group of men who were participating in the "heavies" competition, a combination of events including throwing large stones, heaving iron weights over a bar (pictured) and the caber toss.



There were a few food/beer/scotch booths scattered around the grounds as well as a stage set up for a Scottish fling dancing competition and other traditional music & entertainment. Last but not least, there was a tent with a couple of financial advisers who were giving out balloons. In Robbie's opinion, I think their baloons were what made the trip worthwhile:



Speaking of the trip, it took a bit more than an hour by train, and was a very enjoyable ride. We were on a commuter line paralleling the arc of Tokyo Bay, but from several stories above the ground. We had excellent views out across the bay, as well as back toward central Tokyo. As it turns out, the Ikea and the Costco are on this line, so it is likely we may make it back out that way eventually.

Mt Takao

All right, it would appear that one of the great joys of not updating our blog frequently frequently enough, is that we can hit the archives of "fun things we've done but not blogged about yet" when we have not done anything interesting lately. And, while strictly-speaking that is not a wholly accurate statement, it does make good press. ;-)

It has been raining for the last couple of days, but things are supposed to clear up tomorrow. There's great weather up and down the West Coast right now though; I envy all of you who are outside enjoying .ie w5,hjnnn rgvv lm jbt l ;;;;;
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it. LOL, Robert just climbed up in my lap and made his first direct contribution to our blog. His typing makes about as much sense as his speaking at this point.

Well, I guess in all fairness, Robert is definitely trying to communicate with us now, he just can not speak yet. When he wants to go to the park during the day, he will bring Sarah her shoes, then go either sit in his stroller, or try and put his own shoes on. He has not had a lot of success with that yet, but he does enjoy wearing mommy's slippers:



So, from the archives, here is the day-trip Sarah, Robert and I took to Mt Takao in mid-September:



As you can see on the map behind us, there are several trails leading up the mountain. We took the "Biwa Falls Nature Trail" on the way up, the second one from the left, and it lived up to its name. The trail began paved, turned to gravel, then quickly faded into a dirt track full of large rocks & tree roots. At this point, the stroller became more of a hindrance than anything else, so we strapped it to my back and took turns carrying Robbie up the hill.

Toward the beginning of our hike (while the path was still paved), we passed a small shrine:



We were relatively slow-moving members of a more-or-less steady stream of people making their way up the mountain, and we passed almost as many making their way back down.

Biwa Falls were at about the 1/2 way point of the 3.3k ascent, and we saw several religious devotees standing under the falls, just as mentioned in this brochure.

At the top of the mountain were some flat areas for picnicking, several restaurants, an interpretive center (which would have been more interesting if we could interpret Japanese) and good views:



Robert slept through most of the hike up, so he was not too interested in sitting still during lunch. For the descent, we chose trail #1. This was a fully paved trail that passed through a large shrine complex that sprawled across the mountainside. The forest was not as thick on this side of the mountain, and we had some nice views looking back toward Tokyo and Yokohama:



There were a multitude of souvenir shops along trail #1, as well as a number of snack, drink, and ice-cream shops. To top it all though, there was a park that housed a troop of Japanese Snow monkeys. It cost a couple of bucks to enter, but as you have probably already guessed, we ponied up the ¥ and went in for a peek. There was a handler in the enclosure with the monkeys giving a talk. We could not understand him, but it hardly mattered. There was a female monkey just on the other side of a glass partition from Robbie, and he had a very good time touching the glass and following her as she moved along the edge of her enclosure.

Kodomonokuni (Children's Land)

Sarah and I found a wonderful children's park outside of Yokohama called Kodomonokuni or "Children's Land" in English. This brings up an interesting point, so please bear with me a moment -- the link I provided above takes you Wikipedia, specifically to a web-page about the train line supporting the park, because that is the best site I could find on the park in English.

Here is the official website for Kodomonokuni. Note that it is in Japanese. I have been studying Japanese for several months now, and I still can't make heads or tails of it. Fortunately the good folks at Google have an automated translation service: Same URL, but now in English. It might not be perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than nothing. Station names make some of the most interesting reading, because they tend be literally translated.
We live near "black eye" (Meguro) station, just down the line from "bitter valley" (Shibuya) station.

Kodomonokuni is a very large park by Japanese standards: 240 acres. It was originally a Japanese military storage area, continued as a military facility administered by the US following WWII, and was finally repurposed into a children's park in the mid-sixties.

There are facilities for children of various ages, but we focused on the "farm" area. It contains a large petting zoo, as well as a functioning dairy. They also had pony rides which Robbie and Sarah availed themselves of. And at the end of a very hot day, we were able to cool down a bit by purchasing ice-cream cones made with milk from the park's own cows.

Here are photos from our first visit:





In fact, we enjoyed our first trip so much that we invited our friends Andrew, Deb, and their son Josiah along with us for a second trip a few weeks later. Unfortunately it rained that day, so we more-or-less had the park to ourselves. The petting zoo was not open, but we were still able to see many of the animals from a distance. The squat little goats, for instance, were lined up head to tail at the edge of their enclosure under a 6" overhang, trying to stay out of the rain.

The sheep and cows came down to their fence to visit with us, even though we had no food for them, and we were able to see the prairie dogs, raccoons, geese, chickens, ducks, chipmunks, donkeys, pigs, etc., through a fence, as usual. Two of the main attractions however, were not available: guinea-pig and rabbit holding, and the pony rides. That settles it. I guess we will have to go back.

Here is a picture from our second trip, along with a movie:

More to come ...

I apologize for having let the blog go for so long, this post may not be worth the wait... there is more to come, but not tonight. The application I am here to help develop just moved into UAT (User Acceptance Testing) and along with that, a lot of work. We just purchased our tickets home for the holidays. We are flying into Seattle on Saturday morning the 15th of December, and flying back out again on the 5th of January.

We will be spending the time leading up to and including Christmas in Lacey with David's parents visiting family and friends on the West side. After Christmas, we move East of the mountains and visit our family and friends over there for the balance of our trip.

We will be bringing gifts with us, to be sure, but If there is anything specific you would like us to pick up here and transport back with us when we come, just drop me a line.

Tomorrow or Thursday I will write more about what we have been up to over the last month; there is plenty to write about.