January 2009

January 2009

This year started out well, with a few small road bumps. Katelyn got a cold right before Christmas, and eventually developed pneumonia from it. Below are the few pictures I took during the first few weeks of January, because I was busy trying to get a painting done before a Jan 15th deadline, and nobody was feeling all that well.

Hooray! Andrew turned 4 years old!
We had a small impromptu party on Andrew's birthday with our backyard neighbors and our next-door neighbors, whose kids are friends with Andrew.

We still plan on having a friend party for him in a few weeks.

Our Trip to Tokyo

The last week of January we went to Tokyo--Dave had scheduled leave from work, and we wanted to take a longer trip. Tokyo is about 8 hours south of us by car, and about 3 and a half hours if you take the shinkansen (bullet train). For this trip, we decided to take the shinkansen, which is pricey, but a lot quicker and sort-of fun (although maneuvering through Tokyo subway and train stations with two little kids is not on our list of favorite activites).

We found some interesting things to do while in Tokyo--the rest of this month's pictures are from our trip there.

This is our first evening in Tokyo, we walked over to the neighborhood where the Tokyo Temple is. It is in a nice, obviously upper-scale area. This is a park right across the street from the temple. There were actually a few cherry blossom trees blooming in this park--yes, in January. The weather there was like early spring. Up where we live, we are in the middle of a very cold and snowy winter.

The temple spires peeking through the trees. We took some photos in front of the temple, but they were all blurry.


This is from a neighborhood called Roppongi, not far from the temple. Apparently it is known for its "night life," but we saw lots of evidence of people who have lots of money, including very nice apartment buildings, expensive cars (note the Lamborghini in the photo below), and the shopping center in back of Dave (in the photo above), which featured all kinds of ultra high-end stores that are familiar to us, and yet will never see any of our dollars (or yen) in their cash registers.

This is us at Outback Steakhouse in Tokyo--I know what you're thinking..."you're in Tokyo and you went to Outback Steakhouse?!" Well, yes. But what you may not be considering is that we live in Japan, and where we live is much more rural, so our chances for a good "American Style" dinner out are pretty limited. We also went to TGI Fridays (but don't worry, we went to many other places that are not American chains).

Tokyo is an amazingly modern city. In many places, you could take a picture and tell someone it's from NYC and they would believe you. This is why I had Dave take a picture of us at this cute little shrine, which was tucked in between modern buildings. It is strange to suddenly see a piece of traditional Japan when you are walking by skyscrapers, and even more strange that such a "Japanese" sight should feel out of place!


Lots of bikes and bike riders here. You really have to watch out for them. Here's a little garage for bikes under an apartment building.



This is Tokyo Tower. It is a big tower that looks a lot like the Eiffel Tower, with a building underneath it that has some touristy museums and shops. It's a lot like Hollywood Blvd.


The view from the top (well, the view from the observation deck that we paid to go up to). Tokyo is an amazingly huge city--twice as big as New York City.

The kids walking on a window in the floor. Andrew was a little hesitant, Katelyn walked right over it, no problems.

These next photos are from the "trick art" gallery in the tower. A Japanese artist made a bunch of paintings with trompe-l'oeil techniques (made to fool the eye with realistic details), and some funny things too. The kids had fun here.

Katelyn is Yen.

Andrew is Yen.

Our kids are Yen.

Dave is Yen.

The giraffe is stealing our Yen!

Katelyn!!! How did you get in there?!

Andrew reeling in the big one.

But, really, he's such an angel.

And here we are leaving the trick art museum. Oh, wait! That's not me...

This picture is from the wax museum...one of the creepiest things we've seen in Japan so far. This just surpasses the creepiness of the art installation we saw with dummies of children lying face down in a field of plastic flowers (we went to the Aomori Museum of Art, but took no pictures because it wasn't worth documenting).

Andrew and Dave at the Guinness World Records museum. (are you starting to understand the Hollywood Blvd. comment?)

Dave as the largest man ever.

A nice view of the tower from outside.

Swimming at the hotel.

These next few pictures are from the grounds of the Imperial Palace. It is the main residence of the Emperor of Japan and his family, although regular people can't go to the palace except for twice a year--on the Emperor's birthday, and at New Year (Jan 2nd). Evidentally, that's when the imperial family goes to a balcony and waves to the crowd.
We walked around the East Gardens, which are open to visitors most of the time.

This is from the famous (meaning terribly expensive) Ginza shopping district. Note the crosswalks that go in every direction--this makes it really interesting to get all the way across, because you have to weave through crowds going the other way.

Following are some pictures of us at Showa Kinen park...

"The park was established as park of a project to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Emperor Showa's reign, and it now comprises about 163.0 hectares of completed area."

Does anyone know how big a hectare is?
Anyway, the park was really big. And it had some really neat things. We went specifically for the children's forest, which had some interesting things we thought the kids would like (we dragged them for miles walking around Tokyo, and we were looking for something they would enjoy).

Near the entrance.
This is one of those places we will try to go back to when it isn't winter. It was beautiful even in January, but should be even nicer with good weather.

Andrew on the "rainbow hammock"

We've seen many types of rolling and other very fast slides here in Japan that we don't think would ever pass in the states (too many worries over litigation). We didn't get a photo of another slide here that was wide and very very slippery--we positioned ourselves at the bottom and tried to catch the kids as they went shooting past our legs.

This is the "bouncing dome." The kids had a great time here.

This is our kids with a nice lady who was there playing with her 4-year-old (who I had guessed was three before she started talking to us, he was such a small kid). She was really nice, and played with our kids and told us about herself.

Since she is wearing a mask, this might be a good time to mention the prevalence of surgical-type mask-wearing here in the wintertime. I was really confused by it at first, and did some internet searching and asking around about it. Why do people do it? Are they worried about getting sick? Are they sick themselves, and they don't want to infect others? Are they bank robbers?
Well, the answer is basically, yes...(most people don't rob banks with them, but there have been a few cases of crimes committed with them on).

It is very common to see people walking around with these masks on. You can even buy them with cartoon characters on them (although I never see anyone wearing those). They use them to ward off infection, to protect others from getting an existing illness, as a barrier from smog and exhaust while walking around, and (some say) to humidify the cold air. I can see some logic in these uses, I suppose.
But I still can't figure out why I've seen individuals wearing masks while driving alone in their cars...

A neat structure in the children's area.

"Dragon Dunes"