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:

Well, where to begin? It's only been a month or so since I last updated the blog, but in that time my folks came to visit, we moved to a new apartment in Tokyo, headed back to the US for a bit of R&R, went to zoos in 2 different states, spent a weekend camping at the Northwest String Summit in North Plains Oregon, and went to San Francisco to sort through all of our things to decide what to ship back to Tokyo. All in all it has been a pretty busy month.

Since I've gone this long without an update, you are going to have to indulge me with this one -- it is going to go in more or less reverse chronological order, starting with this weekend.

I am currently in San Francisco, alone, and will be for the next week. On Thursday, Sarah and I left Robert with his Nana (my mother) and scooted down to SFO. We rented a mini-van and hit the local Ikea to load up on a few items we need for our apartment in Tokyo, since Ikea is about 40% less expensive in the US than it is in Japan. One bed for Robbie, several dressers, a couple of end tables, a love seat and one matching chair later, we were back home at 233 Central. We unloaded the furniture and cracked open "the room".

When we left for Tokyo we packed our guest room from front to back, floor to ceiling with the whole of our worldly possessions, then sublet the rest of our place to a friend who is currently in Colorado on a well-timed vacation. I wish I had a picture of the room in its full glory... if you can imagine the classic overstuffed closet, poised to dump its contents from on high soon as the tiniest item is disturbed, that's a pretty accurate description of the room. Unfortunately for us, our "closet" was 10' by 12'. We started into it anyhow, and basically exploded it across the rest of our basement into 3 piles: staying in SF, surface to Tokyo, air to Tokyo. Our air shipment consisted of some bedding, pots, pans, and utensils. Our ground shipment consisted of furniture, baby items (for when we have a second), clothes, camping & outdoor gear, etc. However, after the sorting, we were still left with a giant pile of stuff that we have already lived without for a year, and plan to live without for another 18 months. How much of it do you think we still need?

Anyhow, the movers came to take our things away on Friday and were through by mid-afternoon. Sarah and I celebrated by going to dinner and a movie; cocktails, calamari & salads at Jillians, followed by the Dark Knight.

We fell asleep in each other's arms and woke up to one of those San Francisco mornings that are almost impossible to describe if you have not experienced them -- the air is crisp enough that you ought to wear a sweater, but the sky, the sky is blue. Deep, perfect blue, without a hint of cloud in it. The sun is almost unnaturally bright, and the contrast between colors is incredibly sharp. The wind is out of the West at between 15-20 mph, it's warm in the sunshine, but a bit nippy in the shade. Not a hint of fog, no matter how far West you look, but it feels like an anomaly, an aberration sure to be remedied as soon as the powers that be take note.

The multitude of greens in Buena Vista park and the blue of the sky, coupled with the colors of the Victorians surrounding us on our walk to the Pork Store are almost too much before a first cup of coffee, but somehow we manage to negotiate breakfast, as well as a bit of shopping before it's time to get Sarah back to the airport and her reunion with Robert.

I hurried back from the airport just as fast as I could, strapped my cycling shoes on, and rode to the coast via Golden Gate Park. Riding South along the Great Highway, I could see a tenuous ribbon of fog heading East around the bottom of Lake Merced, and I gave chase. I managed to get into the fog at the boundary between San Francisco and Daily City, and it was everything I remembered it being. The fog had not quite made it down to the ground, but it was trying -- spilling over the low range of hills along the coast and cascading down their leeward sides like a fluid, evaporating as it advanced, but dissipating completely a few tens of feet above the ground.

After my ride I headed home and gave my bike a bath. Then I called up my buddy Tim to see what he was up to, and he told me that I ought to join him over at Dolores park for a movie night. Talk about the perfect ending to a great day! I hopped back on the bike and in about 7 minutes I was at Dolores Park sipping a beer with Tim¸ enjoying the evening and watching the ribbon of fog, no longer tenuous, wind its way around Liberty hill and down toward the financial district.

On Monday morning I woke up for work, and the fog was pervasive. The road was cold and damp, and I realized that although I do miss San Francisco, I am happy to trade it for Tokyo, if only for the next 18 months.

Rainy Season

Well, it's been several more weeks since our last update, so let me fill you in. Robert has gotten his last couple of eye-teeth, it's starting to warm up and get humid, it's been raining a lot, and oh, and we had another earthquake -- a big one, though a fair distance from Tokyo.

My desk is on the 17th floor, and a buddy of mine and I were just sitting down to our desks to get a bit of extracurricular work done on a Saturday morning when we felt the floor start to sway, and the mini-blinds on the windows started slapping rhythmically back and forth from side to side. It was actually quite nautical; there was a creak in the ceiling keeping time with the slapping of the mini-blinds that sounded a lot like a mast under load, and there was the same sense of rolling you get when you're on a sailboat cutting through ocean swells. It lasted about 40 seconds too, plenty of time to figure out what's happening and just hope it doesn't get any worse. Happily for us, that's the worst we got of it. Unfortunately, the epicenter was over a hundred miles from Tokyo, so there was quite a bit of damage, though the main affected area is a hot-springs resort area and relatively rural.

The earthquake triggered numerous landslides, so several hundred tourists were stranded at various hot-springs resorts in the area because access roads were destroyed. Oh well, if you've got to be stranded somewhere ...

We haven't gotten up to much mischief since Loki left several weeks back, but the Tokyo Calypso Customer Conference is tomorrow and my folks are coming for a week's visit this weekend, so I expect we will be up to no good sooner or later.

Speaking of "up to no good", Sarah, Robert and I will be back in Seattle from July 13th through July 18th, camping in North Plains Oregon on the 18th, 19th and 20th for the "Northwest String Summit", then in San Francisco from July 24th through 26th to sort through the boxes in our apartment and decide what is coming back to Tokyo with us. I am going to stay in San Francisco through August 1st while Sarah heads over to Yakima with Robbie, then we'll meet up for a friend's wedding on August 2nd, spend some time with Sarah's family, attend her 10 year high school reunion over the next weekend, and ultimately fly back to Tokyo on the 11th. If you are going to be in the same town state as us, please let me know, we would love to get together while we're in town.

Bed Head:


Hiroo Playground:

A Month Gone

Well, it's been a long time since the blog has had an update, and even longer since I've pulled any pictures off of the camera. We have had an eventful month: we did some apartment hunting and a new apartment, and then our friend Loki visited from the states. We took the opportunity to play tour guide and visited the Kawaguchiko "5 lakes" area at the foot of Mt Fuji, went to Kamakura to see the Great Buddha, and just generally bummed around Tokyo.

Here's Robert hanging out at the park:


This is the Mt Fuji "express". It's the express because it does not stop at every station along the route -- it is not a fast train. That's all right though, since it just meant that we were better able to enjoy the scenery:


Speaking of scenery, here's a picture of Robert learning to navigate a pair of binoculars at 5th station:


And the shrine at 5th station:


There are 10 "stations" from the first station at the base of the mountain, up to the 10th station at the top. Each station is a tradtional rest stop when climbing the mountain. There is a road that terminates at the 5th station, approximately 1/2 way up the mountain. We took a bus up to 5th station, but we passed a number of cyclists on our way, so now I have a new goal: cycle up to 5th station. It looks like a fairly grueling climb, so I think I'll need to do a bit of training beforehand, and I won't be using my shopping bike, though that would certainly be more of a workout!

Our new apartment is a 3 bedroom with a couple of balconies, one of which is large enough to accommodate a BBQ and kiddie pool. The third bedroom is intended as a play room for Robert, and as a guest room... hint hint... the apartment also has a garage -- come to think of it, it's really more of a townhome than an apartment -- so I will be bringing my bicycles over from the US when we return in August. We will also be shipping many of our personal effects over from our place in San Francisco.

But enough about the move for now, though we are really excited about it; here are a couple of final pics. This is the Shinjuku district at night:


And our son, practicing his super-hero pose. I wonder who could have taught him such a silly expression?


This is the face that we make when Joe Zookeeper's wife (we call her Dear) discovers that there is a gorilla in her bed. I don't know what's up with the fork.