Ryogoku

On Saturday, we headed to Ryogoku Station to meet up with Amy and Sebastian (on layover from Vietnam back to Houston). Ryogoku is the home of the sumo stadium and many of the sumo stables (where the sumo wrestlers train). They even have giant pictures of famous sumo wrestlers in the station!

We met up with Amy and Sebastian to give them their sumo tickets. We had lunch together, then they headed to the match.

We decided the kids wouldn't be interested in the wrestling, so we checked out the Tokyo-Edo Museum right next door. Here's Adam waiting in front of the museum while Chris was buying tickets.

The view of the sumo stadium from the museum.

The museum covers the history of Tokyo (from the Edo period around 1600 to today). This is a reconstruction of what childbirth would've looked like in the Edo period, something I was very interested in! The midwife is bathing the baby (with the head on her knees), paying particular attention to the baby's back, which is the most vulnerable spot for demons to enter. The mother is sitting up in bed behind the midwife. After giving birth, the mother was required to SIT UP for a week straight before she could either get up or lie down. This, not surprisingly, led to health complications for many mothers. Ugh.

Chris and Adam posing in front the Edo period boat. Adam thinks it's a pirate ship!

Amy, Lottie, and Adam talking on the Meiji Era (mid-1800s to WWII) phone.

There were a lot of things to climb and touch - perfect for little ones. Adam riding a bike rickshaw.

Chris, Adam, and Lottie in a one-person rickshaw (which is why you can't even see it behind Chris).

Amy and Adam on an old timey bicycle.

After visiting the museum, we checked out a nearby park that had been the site of the largest number of deaths in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. This is a memorial to the children killed in the earthquake. Most people were not killed in the actual quake, but in the aftermath, when fire ravaged the city.

The park had an earthquake museum (we didn't go in) with a display of items from the earthquake outside. This is a bunch of nails that melted together in the fire.

The park also had a small but nice playground and a Japanese garden. There were even some narcissus (daffodils) blooming - they are in season here already.

Then we walked back by the sumo stadium. There were loads of people and you could see sumo wrestlers leaving the stadium.