Sea Paradise: The Yokohama Aquarium

Last weekend we headed down to Yokohama to go visit Sea Paradise with a friend of mine from work and his family. The little digital camera I packed was woefully inadequate for taking pictures of the jumping dolphins, porpoises, and beluga whales during the Marine Mammal show, however I did catch a good picture of a Walrus doing its Macauly Culkin impression:



Sarah and Robert preparing to enjoy the show:



A 3-story tank:



And what aquarium would be complete without a snack stand in the form of a San Francisco cable-car? Interestingly, the poster you can see in the window at the end of the car informed me that the F-line train running from Fisherman's Wharf, up Market Street to Castro has only been in service since 1995. Who knew?



Anyhow, I know this is kind of a short post, but we're heading to Waikiki tomorrow for a week's vacation so there are a few last-minute details to finish up. The itinerary we've got planned looks something like this:

Sunday: lay on the beach & play in the water.
Monday: lay on the beach & play in the water.
Tuesday: lay on the beach & play in the water.
Wednesday: lay on the beach & play in the water.
Thursday: lay on the beach, play in the water, and eat Turkey.
Friday: lay on the beach & play in the water.
Saturday: lay on the beach, play in the water, and watch the Cougs lose.
Sunday: lay on the beach, play in the water, and head back home.

My folks are flying in on Wednesday and staying at the hotel next-door. We're staying at the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani across the street from the beach -- much more economical than staying on the beach.

I'll post again once we've arrived and gotten ourselves situated.

More Language Fun!

Ok, so I know I just posted, but this really couldn't wait. The Japanese language is rife with onomatopoeic phrases, one of which is 'Shyua', 'Shyua', for the sound you make while brushing your teeth. Robert is very familiar with this phrase; one of his morning cartoons features the "Shyua Shyua" song.

Robert also attends pre-school several days each week. One of his closest friends at the school is another boy named Kenzo. Kenzo is Belgian by heritage, his folks are from the French speaking part of Belgium (not to be confused with the Flemish speaking part of Belgium -- they aren't really on speaking terms), so Kenzo gets mostly French at home. Kenzo is also just learning to talk, and the reports we get from Robert's teachers basically say that Kenzo and Robert spend all day talking in a language that only they can understand.

While "Shyua Shyua" is the Japanese sound for toothbrushing, "Amagake" is the official term for brushing your teeth (or so I've gathered from Robert's show). So the other night I gave Robert his bath, got him dressed for bed, turned to him and said "Amagake?", and he looked at me and responded "Le Shyua!" before running into the bathroom for his toothbrush.

Robert's First Sentance

First things first; it's been rainy here, so we did not get up to much mischief this weekend. Sarah and Robbie slept in 'till well past 9:00 this (Sunday) morning, so I decided to make a good old-fashioned brunch of fruit, waffles, & bacon. Robert came upstairs while I was cooking the bacon and as soon as he smelled it began excitedly jumping up and down in the kitchen next to me shouting "Bacon! Bacon!" and as he ran into the living room to make sure mama knew what we were getting for breakfast, he exclaimed "I Love Bacon!" -- his first complete sentence. I have never been so sure he was my son, nor so proud. :-D

Although we stuck pretty close to home, we did make it to Shibuya to purchase a fake(!) Christmas tree. I never thought I'd see the day when we didn't have a real tree, but as we have yet to see a true Christmas tree, we figured a false tree is better than no tree at all.

While shopping, I came across a couple of things that I thought were worth sharing. It's taken me 3 days to get these pictures off of my mobile phone, but at long last, I have finally managed it. Here they are. Enjoy:

First, spray-bottle covers:



If you get one of these babies for Christmas, well, you saw it here first.

Next up, if you've ever been out to the coast to dig razor clams, then you know what a fashion parade it can be. While cold weather gear is nice to have, and waterproofing is de rigueur, the perfect pair of high-heeled galoshes can really take your outfit to the next level:



Last but not least, here is a picture from this summer that's been living on my camera for far too long. This gigantic octopus is located between Ebisu station and my office at Prime Square Tower. There are some other playgrounds closer to home, but none of them attempt to tackle the oversized sea creature meme quite like this one:

Tokyo Disneyland

Sarah, Robbie and I were supposed to head to Thailand last week, but work and expensive airline tickets conspired to keep us a bit closer to home. Instead of Thailand, we visited Tokyo Disneyland last Thursday.



Disneyland was celebrating Halloween, and the whole park was done up in theme: cobwebs, ghosts, and pumpkins abounded, not even the resident marching band was spared:



The band was really excellent. They (of course) played mostly themes from various Disney movies but the arragements were excellent, and the sound was tight. Robert had a great time watching and listsening to them -- so much so that he did not want to leave until they were through with their performance. We even caught them again in the afternoon on our way out because he seemed to enjoy it so much. I think we've got a future band nerd in the making -- not that he ever had much choice in the matter.

We rode a couple of rides, watched a halloween-themed parade, rode another couple of rides, ate some tasty food and rode a few more rides. Even on a Thursday the threat of rain in the forecast, the lines for the major attractions were 2+ hours long. Luckily for us, Robert didn't care about riding the "big" rides, (and probably was not tall enough for them anyhow) so we enjoyed riding some of the smaller attactions -- besides, the lines for those were only between 1/2 hour and 45 minutes long.

Right about the time Robert was winding down and heading toward a nap, the clouds opened up and it started pouring down rain. At this point we decided to take our leave of Disneyland, so we hopped the train back home. Door to door, the trip to Disneyland was not quite an hour, so it's definitely something we will do again. The world's only Disney Sea is also here in Tokyo. We will check it out before long too.

On Saturday we headed to the Ueno Zoo and visited the animals. On the way there, we ran into George Clooney -- or rather we ran into a billboard of George parking his Honda. Only in Japan. I can't decide whether the item in his hand is a remote ignition for the vehicle, or whether the car is a prop in some elaborate casino heist and he's got a hand-held detinator, ready to blow it to smithereens.



In either case, he appears to be trying to get some distance between himself and the vehicle in a big hurry.

Hakone Revisited

Marika Bell came to visit from Singapore last week. We took the opportunity to play a bit of tour guide, went with her up to Hakone, over to Kamakura and around Tokyo.

I took Friday off from work and we headed up to Hakone on the Odakyu RomanceCar -- a limited express service to Hakone-Yumoto. Robert enjoyed watching the scenery out the window, and we bought him a package of cookie/crackers from the food-cart lady when she came by. Once in Hakone-Yumoto we transferred to the Hakone-Tozan line and switchbacked our way up the side of Mt. Hakone.

We stayed at the Fujiya Hotel in Miyanoshita, but in their Ryokan-style annex, rather than the main hotel -- tatami floors & futons for sleeping are a pleasant switch-up from Western style, and the room was great with plenty of space. After dropping our things at the hotel, we hopped the train to the Hakone Open Air Museum where Sarah and Marika enjoyed a relaxing foot soak in the museum's onsen:



while I enjoyed some art:



and some more art:



The next morning we completed the classic "round course" through the Hakone region, taking the train to Gora, transferring to a cable-car that took us up a steep incline to Sounzan where we transferred to a gondola. We had read that if you can get onto the gondola early in the day, you are often rewarded with spectacular views of Mt. Fuji. We made it to the Gondola around 10, but unfortunately for us, we were in the clouds and could see nothing but about 20 feed of cable off either end of the gondola. I guess we'll have to go back!

The first gondola ride came to an end at a place called Owakudani. There is a sulfer works there, and a lot of geothermal activity. The main tourist attraction at this stop is "kuroi tamago" or black egg. These are eggs that have been hard-boiled in the sulfur rich hot-spring water, turning their shells black:



The area where the eggs are hard-boiled is a bit of a hike up a hill from the gondola station, but well worth the trip. For the infirm (or unmotivated), there is a little gondola system going up the side of the mountain with just enough payload to bring down a few dozen freshly boiled eggs at a time, so you can purchase them without the workout. However, we made it up to the top to get the fresh stuff:



After eating our black eggs, we got back on the gondola and headed down to lake Ashi, but not before Robert displayed that he is not afraid of heights:



We ate lunch at a restaurant in Togendai while waiting for a pirate ship to come and ferry us down the length of the lake. Yes, I really did mean pirate ship:



After the pirate ship dropped us off, we visited a reconstruction of the Edo Checkpoint that existed along the Tokaido highway during Japan's Shogun period, then we hopped a bus back to Hakone-Yumoto and the RomanceCar to Tokyo.

Remember the cookie/crackers that I mentioned we bought for Robert on the trip to Hakone? So did he. When the snack-cart lady came by, he was out of his seat in a flash and over to her cart, pulling the box of cookies out of the side while she helped another passenger. It was so adorable that we couldn't not buy them for him.

Monday was "physical fitness day", a national holiday, so Marika and I went to see Daibatsu while Sarah stayed home w/ Robbie. He had preschool though, so mostly Sarah had a day to herself. I have a few pictures of the trip to Kamakura, but nothing that can top these pictures from our living room, so I will close with them.

Come on fingers, I know you can do this!

Fall

Well, we arrived back in Tokyo to an empty apartment, quite literally. For our first several days in our place, we ate out for every meal & the whole family was sleeping on an air mattress with a single pillow and blanket.

I am happy to report that over the last couple of months(!) our domestic situation has dramatically improved. Our air shipment was delivered 4 or 5 days after we'd landed, and with it Robert's mattress, blankets, pillows, and the basic kitchen necessities required to prepare and consume food. Several weeks thereafter, we received the rest of our things from the US, and I am happy to report that we are now all moved in!

We even have curtains & light fixtures. Evidently, Japan has standardized its light-fixture socket situation better than the US. When we moved in, the ceiling in our living room had a couple of strange looking sockets. We took careful measurements of them, then went to Tokyu Hands to try and locate a fixture that would fit. As it turns out, we had our pick as almost all of the fixtures in the store were compatible with our sockets. So without further ado, here's a picture of our living room & light fixture:



Now that September is almost over, the weather has cooled enough that it's pleasant to spend time outdoors. Robert and I have been exploring some of the parks in the area and getting a lot of mosquito bites in the process! There is a really excellent park near our place called "Himonya Koen". It has a nice playground, a petting zoo (dogs, rabbits and guinea pigs), pony rides for $1.50, and there are rowboats available for tooling around the pond that's in the middle of the park.

On another note, here's a picture of our son practicing to be on a Japanese gameshow:


We are a bit further out of central Tokyo than we were at our last place, but our apartment is still quite accessible; it is a 10-15 minute walk from Meguro station on the Yamanote train line, and just a couple of blocks off of Meguro-dori, the same street that our old apartment was on. I still ride my bike to work, but it takes a couple of minutes longer now -- 14 minutes instead of 12. Go ahead and cry for me if you need to.

Our new address is:

14-11 Meguro 3-Chome, Meguro Hills #202
Meguro-Ku, Tokyo, 153-0063

Here is a link on google maps: Ours is the upper right-hand balcony.

and we still have a telephone number in the US (thanks to Skype): 415-508-4025.

The next time we will be in the US is over Christmas. Right now it looks like we will be in Eastern Washington over Christmas and Lacey over New Years before finishing up in grand style with a vacation on the coast before heading back to Tokyo. We are also planning a trip to Thailand and perhaps Singapore in late October or early November.

Ok, so the trip to San Francisco was excellent. I was able to catch up with many of my friends in the SF Bay area, but unfortunately not all of them. We will be back in the bay area permanently before long though, and we are looking forward to seeing those of you we missed.

Enough about me though, as the readers of this blog are quick to point out, a picture is worth a thousand words. With that in mind, here is the first 1/2 of our trip in more-or-less chronological order:

Our last day in corporate housing. I don't know whether to cheer or cry. We will miss the ladies at the front desk (and the maid service) but having an apartment filled with our own possessions? Priceless:



The deal I negotiated with my employer (if I mention their name here, my boss will get an e-mail tonight and have to schedule a meeting with me tomorrow that he and I would both rather avoid) included business class tickets for myself and my family at the initiation & termination of my secondment, so here is Robert, living it up with his own seat in business class:



Right before the flight left however, United bumped us all up to first class. Here is Robert with his own seat in first class:



I wish I had more stories about first class, but this is pretty much what Sarah and I did too. I guess that's really what you're paying for, the ability to sleep comfortably for 7 hours of an 8.5 hour flight.

After arriving in the US, we went to the Woodland Park zoo with our friends Gerry, Cammy, and Reed. Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures to commemorate the experience. However, later that week, we went down to Portland to visit my Grandfather & Aunt Pam. Aunt Pam took us to the Portland Zoo, and do I have a great picture of that:



On Thursday, around lunch time, we headed West out of Portland to North Plains for a weekend spent camping with our aforementioned friends Gerry, Cammy, and their son Reed at the Northwest String Summit. On Thursday afternoon, after the sound check, Robert tried out a "big kid" swing for the first time:



Here we are back at camp on the first night, Robert is up to his usual tricks, taking candy from babies (or in this case, freeze-dried vegetables from a toddler):



For historical purposes, here is a picture or our camp:



Here's a picture of the ear protection that Robert would wear just long enough to get his picture taken. Luckily however, we had silicone ear plugs as well, and since Mom and Dad were wearing them too, we were able to convince him that it was cool to keep them in his ears...



Robert spent Saturday morning down on the floor, playing with a little hula hoop. After he tired of hooping, he decided to just stand back and enjoy the music: