Tokyo

Another big ice cream for coby
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8/9

Travel day as we head back to Tokyo. We have some time in Osaka before we leave after noontime, but decided to just take it easy as we don't want to deal with dragging our luggage on buses. We get back to Tokyo after 4pm and check into our hotel. We have 2 rooms across the hall from each other. Each has a tiny kitchenette and washer/dryer. We find the dryer is pretty much useless and just end up air drying our laundry each day.  We tune into the olympics and all they are showing is Judo.

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8/10

It's shopping day. We head over to Ginza district to do some toy shopping. First we head over to a ramen noodle bar Tony knows about and sit down for a relaxing lunch. First stop, the Sony store. Out front is a huge aquarium tank with sharks and eels. Inside is a "virtual" aquarium that is interspersed w/the merchandise on 4 floors. Basically they are monitors displaying sea life. On the top floor is a 3D show. It basically shows scenes from the Osaka aquarium that we had missed when we were there.

Japanese fighting beetle
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After that we go to a huge model store and we stock up on bullet trains and gundams. Then we wandered over to toysrus. Should have done it in the reverse order as something we got at the model shop was 2/3 more than the price at toysrus. We seem to notice there is no MSRP around here. On more than a few other occasions, we find the same price discrepency between souveniers we buy. Pretty frustrating! At toysrus they were selling Japanese fighting beetles. Pretty expensive at 2500 yen (25.00).

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In the evening, we met up with an former co-worker of Tony's for dinner at an Italian restaurant.

8/11

We take the subway over to Ueno where there is a huge park w/zoo and various museums. We are heading to the National Science Museum. There are two wings, global and japanese. We decide to just do the global wing. It has 4 floors of themed exhibits. Dinosaurs, Early man, physics, and technology. Everything is in Japanese, but Coby has fun pushing buttons and poking at video screens. It was fun to see their display of "old" technology. Gee, I used that in high school!

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After the museum, we headed off for Kappabashi district where all the restaurant supply stores are. Unfortunately, we misread the map and end up walking for 40mins in the hot sun! As it turns out, two pages that we thought were adjacent, were not. We were missing about 6 blocks of streets in between. Poor Coby. I kept on telling him we were almost there, but I had no idea where we were!

We went past a Krispie Creme shop. There was a disneyland like roped line out in front and 2 security guards. Gee, must be a popular place! Eventually, we found what Tony was looking for: plastic food. This is the display food you always see in Japanese restaurant windows. Pretty expensive, but I guess everything is hand painted. We also walked by a kitchen museum. Sometimes they use that term lightly as it was just a collection of large pots arranged as robots. No educational content.

Tony at the Fish Market
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In the evening, we head over to Asakusa to see the Senso-ji temple. We go to a hot plate type of restaurant for dinner and Mary Lou orders us dinner. The menu is completely in Japanese, so we have no clue what she ordered, but it was delicious. The temple area was closed down in the evening, so all the souvenier shops were shuttered. This was actually nice as it allowed the boys to run around and let off steam without us worrying about them causing a scene! The temple was huge.

On the way back, we came across a 99yen store. We went wild and ended up buying 3000 yen worth of souveniers. Sure made up for that Europe trip!

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8/12

Another museum day. Mary Lou drives us over to the Emerging Science Museum (Mirikan). Nearby is the Maritime museum, which is built to look like a cruise ship. The Science Museum is pretty much like any other science center with hands on displays. The kids pretty much figure out what to do. There was a video game exhibit where the kids got to try out different ways to control an object (pushing buttons, moving an object, joy stick, racing wheel, pulling a rope). Another exhibit had you program a pattern of black and white balls which where then sent on a marble-run type of setup to a destination station.  They also had a robot that traversed various types of terrain.

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On our way back from the museum, we went by the Pokemon Center. This is basically just a store w/pokemon merchandise galore. It was pretty busy. Guess Pokemon is still pretty big in Japan!

8/13

Today it's the Ramen Museum in Yokohama. Basically, they have amassed all the different ramen shops in Yokohama into one centralized place. This way you can sample the different types of ramen w/o having to run all over town. Of course, you have to pay admission! There wasn't much to the museum part. Just a small history of ramen in Japanese! The shops are made up to look like they did in historic Yokohama. You can go around to various shops and get a sample bowl, but you have to wait in line at each one. So we just picked one and had a nice lunch. In the museum store, you can actually buy ramen kits from the various shops to take home.

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After that we headed over to the Minato Mirai district where the landmark tower is. It's the tallest tower in Japan. Tony stops by another toy store he knows at the train station. The shopping center adjacent the tower has a huge Snoopy store. There's also another Pokemon center, there there was actually a very long line to get into the store! That was incredible. Waiting in line so you can shop? Huh? Anyhow, at the tower, we went up one of the fastest elevators in the world. It goes 46 floors in 35secs (750meters/sec) up to the top elevation of 296meters. At the top they have some aquarium displays.

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8/14

Last full day. Tony gets up at 4am to get to the fish market by 6am. It's crowded with other tourists. Tony said it was quite dangerous with all the trucks/carts moving around. He and Moon-ki had sushi nearby.

The kids and I were hanging out at the hotel. The plan is to meet Tony and Moon-ki at the Railroad museum in Omiya. On the way there Tony gets a haircut for 2000yen (20.00) which includes a cut, shave, shampoo, and massage. Better than supercuts!

At the museum, the have a huge display area of real train engines. They also have a very large diorama of Tokyo with tons of trains running. Basically, they open the room up until it is full. Then they close it and start the 10min show of the trains running the circuit. Then they boot you out! The museum was really crowded due to the holiday. They have a mini shikansen train that runs along the museum. They also have a driving school of sorts, but you needed a reservation to do that and it was all full by the time we got there at noon. The gift shop was entirely crammed full of people too. That's Tokyo for you! The older kids found the place rather boring though.

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Next we headed over to Shinjuku to head up the Metropolitan Government Building. First we stopped for some Yakatori at a local bar. Moon-ki filled us in on a salary man's life while we ate. Tony had to get a sake to complete his salary man experience. Then we went up to the north observation deck. We could actually see the faint outline of Mt. Fuji.

8/15

Well, that's it. We spend the day packing up and getting on a bus out to the airport. It's a 2hr journey.  Brevan, Coby, and I head out first and arrive in SF at 10am. Tony and Alex have to go by way of LA and a long 5hr stopover and arrive at Oakland airport at 7pm. They take the bart to Milbrae station where I pick them up. Then Tony and Alex pack up for an overnight camping trip the next day! No thanks. I'm staying home and getting some rest!