Meiji Shrine

After a good night's sleep (Lottie really appreciated a crib and her own space!), we headed out to Harajuku and Meiji Jingu (Shrine). Adam loved the bridge.

Adam praying at the shrine.

Adam fooled around in front of one of the huge tori gates.

Adam and Lottie played around in front of some "holy" trees.

Lottie practiced pulling up and climbing the stairs at the shrine.

Chopsticks

After we got in to the New Sanno Hotel (Navy-run, but available to all military), we headed down to Kikuya, their Japanese restaurant. The food and the service was absolutely wonderful. They were sooo nice to the kids. A waitress even made a kid-friendly pair of chopsticks for Adam, using a rubber band and the paper cover from the chopsticks. He could actually pick up a few grains of rice with it!

Yunessun Revisited

After our day of transportation fun and our restful night at the ryokan, we spent the morning relaxing at Yunessun, the hot spring amusement park. First we got our dead foot skin eaten away by fish (yes, really). I wasn't about to pay 1,000 yen for the picture to prove this, but it's true. And yes, they did a pretty good job. Our feet do feel much smoother. Then we ate some lunch.

Adam and Gram enjoying the rock bed.

Gram, Bapa, and Adam enjoy their favorite bath, the green tea. It's the hottest one of the specialty baths, as far as we can tell.

Adam dumping bath water on Gram.

Amy and Adam enjoying the other green tea bath.

Lottie, having a great time at Yunessun! That hot water just wears a baby out.

The new chocolate bath. It really does smell like chocolate. And there's a huge chocolate bar above your head...

Once Lottie woke up, she had a great time in the kids' bath with Gram.

Everyone in their Yunessun robes before leaving. Even Lottie got one this time.

Hakone Loop

Hakone is a two year old boy's dream. In order to get around, you take six different forms of transportation: a regular train, a mountain train, a cable car (funicular), a ropeway (gondola), a pirate ship, and a bus. That's right, a pirate ship. They are actually replicas of old pirate ships that used to ply the waters of Lake Ashi. Only in Japan. Lottie enjoyed hanging on the mountain train.

Then we got on the cable car - it was really steep.

A view from the gondola. If you squint, you can see Mount Fuji behind Chris's head.

A better view of Fuji. We were really close, and it was gorgeous covered in snow.

Enjoying the view.

A view of the pirate ship from the ropeway.

Waiting for the pirate ship to leave.

The authentic pirates on board the ship. Lottie doesn't know what to make of it. Adam is still a little scared (but he still touched the pirate - success!).

Gram and Bapa enjoyed the pirate cruise too. There are no pictures of the bus, because, well, Japanese buses are the same as American buses. Except they drive on the wrong side of the road. Adam enjoyed the loop so much, he's already asking to go again. He actually wanted to do it again immediately after we finished the boat cruise. Maybe in the spring, when we won't freeze on the cruise?

Ichinoyu

We visited Hakone (a resort area outside of Tokyo near Mount Fuji) for an overnight. Our first stop when we got to the Hakone area was to drop off our bags! The little railway train dropped us off, and we found this map of the area. Hmmm. We did manage to figure out where our ryokan (Japanese style hotel) was, and started down the path/ramp/stairs.

We found this Buddha under the stairs on the way to the ryokan.

Then Adam posed by this garden.

Once we got to Ichinoyu (which has been around for over 375 years), we dropped off our bags. Here's the view from our room.

After our day in Hakone, we enjoyed relaxing in the room before dinner. There was the tatami mat area and a nice area by the windows with the view of the river.

We then went upstairs to dinner. Most ryokans offer dinner and breakfast there - many served in your room. This one served dinner in their restaurant, but it was still delicious. We had a multi-course meal: raw beef with green onions, shabu shabu pork (like fondue), fried cod, seared Spanish mackerel, miso soup, rice, and yuzo (a Japanese citrus) sherbet. I don't like fish, and even I liked almost everything.

Everyone posing in our room.

The big draw of this ryokan was the private outdoor bath. Japanese bathing consists of washing while sitting on a stool with a showerhead, then, after you are fully clean, soaking in scaldingly hot water. Bapa and Gram tried out the public bath downstairs, while Adam and Lottie enjoyed bathing Japanese style. They loved the hot water - straight from the hot spring. We all had a good time soaking in the hot water while enjoying the view of the river.

Reading

Adam will gladly sucker anyone into reading as many books as you can stand to him. Bapa especially was a good sport and read LOTS of books for both Adam and Lottie.

Christmas in January

Gram and Bapa (Callicott) came to visit in mid-January. We also celebrated a late Christmas with presents for the kids! Lottie got a push stroller with a doll (her first). She made great strides in pulling up and starting to cruise while Gram and Bapa were here, so she must have liked the presents!

Adam loves anything that moves, so he got a wooden dump truck. Here it's being loaded with other vehicles.

Gram and Bapa enjoying their (for now) youngest grandchild.

Lottie is enjoying a Texan rubber duckie.

Adam is a cowboy.

Nine Months

Lottie just went for her nine month appointment. She's now 18 pounds, 5 ounces, and 28 inches (approximately). She's getting longer, but not much heavier. The techs here have no idea how to measure babies. For instance, he actually asked me if Lottie could stand up, so he could get her height. Well, she's working on it! She's pulling up on everything in sight, including the walls. The hallway is very fun.

She also likes eating baby finger food (puffs, wagon wheels). Nani likes hovering around her, waiting for the crumbs to fall.

She's still grunting away, and is really good at imitating noises, from barking dogs to crying babies. Mama is still her favorite word.

The closer she is to walking, the happier she is getting!

Thanks?

Adam is playing with his trains and calls me over.

"Mom?"
"Yes, Adam."
"I'm sad and proud of you."
"Thanks?"

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.