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Most likely I'll post some pics as part of whatever update I give, and given that there is no way all three of my daughters will think that they look good in the same photo at the same time, pics will likely be pulled and right there is your incentive to check back every day to see how things actually went before something gets taken down.This section will contain the running commentary from the trip, in regards to the most recent country we have been in. But once I'm able to start the next country, I'll put the historical posts in the "Old Updates - XYZ" tab above. This all assumes I (or one of my kids) will be able to figure out how to make this website work.

If you want to read about the first 28 days and our time in Italy, then click here.

If you want to read about our time in Turkiye, then click here.

If you want to read about our safari in Kenya, then click here.

If you want to read about our beach vacation in Tanzania, then click here.

If you want to read about our amusement park/desert experience in the U.A.E, then click here.

If you want to read about our desert/beach experience in Oman, then click here.

If you want to read about our jungle ruins experience in Cambodia, then click here.

If you want to read about our elephant/beach experience in Thailand, then click here.

If you want to read about our beach/city experience in Australia, then click here.

If you want to read about our adventure/beach experience in New Zealand, then click here.

If you want to read about our under water adventure in the Maldives, then click here.

If you want to read about our Taj Mahal adventure in India, then click here.

If you want to read about our Disney adventure in Hong Kong, then click here.

If you want to read about our Disney adventure in China, then click here.

If you want to read about our Political/girlie adventure in Seoul, then click here.

The Journey Continues - Japan

To jump directly to one of our days in Japan, click here:

DAY 227

DAY 234

Seoul to Okinawa

Okinawa to Tokyo

Day 215

We were a bit unsure about whether we would be able to catch an Uber so early in the morning in general, but were doubly unsure after things were closed the day before due to the impeachment. So we ordered 2 Ubers ahead of time to be ready by 5:15am.

In general, we are pretty good at getting up and out - we have friends who have had to literally drag their teenagers out of the beds to go to school or work, but we can rely on our kids to get up on their own and get packed and be ready if we tell them when. So it was relatively seamless leaving the room at 5:15 to get our Ubers, even if some of us got up at 4am to do it.

We got to the airport a little faster than we thought, which was good because the security was a bit longer than one might have thought, particularly for 6am. But we got through with plenty of time. There were a few kids play areas by our gate, and once again we were impressed by how much more every other country seems to take care of kids than the US. This also comes through in customs, when we almost always are brought to a separate, shorter line, or boarding, when we are usually allowed to board early.

We looked for a place to get food while Megan and Liam went to a play area. We found a Dunkin, and then I went to the lounge to see if there were any free waters I could get (which there was). We boarded the flight early because we had Liam.

You don't usually see play areas this cool in the US.

On the flight, they served food and although it was beef and noodles and Liam usually will eat noodles, he wouldn’t eat any of the food. I eventually got him to try some yogurt, and he decided that he liked it. So he ate mine, his and Elenna’s (when there is 3 across seating, we are the three together). A bit later in the flight there was a little turbulence and Liam says to me, “I don’t like this flight.” So I ask “Why is that?” and then he proceeds to throw up.

You can skip this next paragraph if you want to. They served us drinks with the meal in these tiny paper cups (just slightly bigger than the paper cups you have in your bathroom to rinse your mouth when you brush your teeth. So I grab that as I see he is about to throw up again, and catch most of the second round. But then my hand is covered in vomit and I can’t do anything with it without creating a mess. I eventually get Megan’s attention from the row in front of us and she gets a air sickness bag back to me, and Liam continues to throw up. Eventually we get a ziplock so I can start to put away some of the vomit laden things and Megan gives me some wipes so I can clean myself and Liam up a little bit. All this time, Elenna sat quietly next to us, not helping because she didn't want to get close to the vomit (who does?). We were in our descent, so when we landed, the stewardess came over and gave us a bunch of towels and wipes and things.

As I wiped everything down, I was surprised to see that the carnage was relatively well contained. Although his pants and jacket were hit hard, his shoes weren’t, he largely missed the bag under his seat and I only had a smattering on my clothes. We got him off of the plane and the plan was to find a bathroom to get him changed (I always have a spare outfit for him in his carryon for emergencies) but it took about 10 minutes before we came across one. I got him all cleaned up and changed and we put his dirty clothes into some ziplocks (Korea actually had us put our portable chargers into separate ziplocks, so we had a bunch to use).

We got through customs and then had to find the rental car place which was a long walk and required a few elevator stops. Then we realized that we needed to hop on a van to take us to the rental agency, which was about another 10 minute drive from the airport.

When we were preparing for our trip, Megan said that we needed to get international drivers’ licenses, something that I hadn’t heard of. I have rented cars in a couple of countries and never had a problem, but her message boards said that they were necessary. So we went to AAA (which apparently is where you get them) and they gave us this paper license that looks incredibly easy to forge and I felt like we just wasted $50. We proceeded to rent cars in other countries without being asked for it, but in Japan, we finally found a place that cared.

Then we headed off to our AirBNB. The kids were excited because for the first time in a while, everyone would get their own room. Unfortunately, when we got there, we found that one of the rooms was a room, but with just a curtain that was drawn across as the door. Compounding it, there were just mats for a bed. Unfortunately for Keira, it was her turn to get the worst room, so she was quite disappointed, but eventually took it in stride. Elenna offered to switch with her, but she declined.

Megan and I went to the supermarket to get groceries and we found most things that we were looking for. There was no Nutella, but I found a chocolate spread that I figured Liam might like (he didn't). The girls had asked for Chicken Lo Mein for dinner, and we debated getting a type of spaghetti we could get in the US (which is usually what we use), but instead bought something that looked more authentically Japanese.

We found pretty much found everything we were looking for, but the sizes weren't quite American if this was the "Big Pack".

Megan made dinner while I belatedly realized that I should have given Liam a shower when we first got to the house, and I probably shouldn’t be wearing these clothes, and who knew when the last time was that he got a shower. We both looked much better after this and ate the dinner (the noodles were a hit). I then made everyone do some exercises, because we were trying to get back into shape.

Since we went to Okinawa because it is supposedly the birthplace of Karate, we watched the Karate Kid 2 together. This movie takes place in Okinawa, although a month ago I discovered that it actually was filmed in Hawaii. I remember it being pretty good, but I can’t say that it held up terribly well.

The next morning we all slept in, but Liam was up around 8:30 and he was coughing badly so Megan got up with him and gave him some medicine. Liam hasn’t had a fever, and Megan believes that his throwing up was largely due to the turbulence on the plane (Lily said that she also felt a bit sick on the plane), but I was a little worried that it was somehow some reaction to all yogurt he ate (the last thing we need is a dairy allergy). He has had a cough for about a week, which was an issue because he was keeping Lily up and coughing on her all night as they shared a bed in Seoul. Eventually, we all got up and ate lunch. Liam and I did some Pokemon hunting while the girls (ex-Lily who was doing homework) watched Gossip girl. After that, we did a workout and then went to the movies to see Snow White.

It took a little bit of work to find a movie theater that was showing Snow White in English, but since we are big Disney fans, everyone in the family wanted to see it. So we went to a movie theater in the American Village (Okinawa is a big naval base for the US, so there are a lot of Americans here). The movie got horrible reviews, but we all thought it was quite good, and I’m honestly not sure what you could expect from a live action Snow White.

Everyone loves refreshments.

Then we went out to eat at a hibachi restaurant that got good reviews. The Wagyu beef was quite good.

Hibachi is a family favorite.

Then we walked around the area for a little bit, trying to understand what people in Japan thought an American Village should look like - it has a McDonalds, Tony Roma’s, A&W, movie theater, bowling alley and a bunch of kitschy shops. So, of course we loved it and decided that we had to go back another day to explore it more.

Nothing more American than M&Ms.

Day 217

Through one of those random occurrences that sometimes make you feel like things aren’t random, the family that we hit it off with best in the Maldives was also in Okinawa this week. So we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to meet up with them. The problem was that they were in a hub and we weren’t in the hub, so we felt a little weird tagging along with their group. Luckily, the leader of the group was incredibly nice and encouraged us to join them.

We met up with them at a rock formation and walked around for a bit.

Liam and Henry picked up right where they left off.

Then the plan was to go to a beach and eat lunch, and Henry’s family had brought sandwiches, so we stopped back at our house and made sandwiches and met theme there. Liam and Henry played on the beach for about 4-5 hours while we talked. There were a couple of other teenagers at the hub, so we had Elenna talk to the girls that was her age (Lily was back at the house, doing school work).

There was a lighthouse nearby, but the kids didn’t want to come, so Megan and I walked over with Henry’s parents and some of the other people from the hub. Unfortunately, we got there about 5 minutes too late to climb the lighthouse. But it was situated on the edge of a cliff and had some pretty cool views.

Great views, but a bit windy.

We said goodbye to Henry (or as Liam called him, “Hen-er-ee” in three syllables) and his family and made vague plans to meet up with them again the next day. Then we went home and Megan cooked dinner while I gave Liam a shower and finished a load of laundry. After that, Keira, Liam, Megan and I played cards for a while, before Liam fell asleep on Megan’s chair, and the three of us played Rummy 500 by 1s.

The next morning, Liam got up way too early (around 8am) and then woke us up because his iPad didn’t work. I warned him that waking us up early will make him and us cranky, but that warning went unheeded. We decided to meet up with Henry’s family at a beach. Although we weren’t part of the hub, we kept meeting them where the hub was going. Lily and Elenna had schoolwork, and Keira is always looking for an excuse to lie in bed and do nothing, so it was just the three of us. The good thing about the hub was that it was so flexible, the bad thing about it was that the agenda was so flexible that it wasn’t always clear what was going on. We got to the beach as they were about to leave, so Henry’s family stayed with us for a little, and then we went to a lookout tower where we thought everyone was going next.

Turns out that they went somewhere else, but we went up to the tower, taking this “self driving” golf carts, that weren’t futuristic as much as they were like Disney ride cars, that took us up to the base of the tower.

At first, self driving golf carts sounded good, but then we realized that they were just on a track like a Disney ride.

In the tower there was a shell museum, that was somewhat more interesting than it sounds. But still not interesting enough to spend more than 15 minutes there. Then we ate our lunches and then climbed to the top of the tower.

The shell museum was about as interesting as a shell museum could be.

After checking out the gift shop and the free samples, we went down the hill in those cars and decided to go see another beach where there was “Heart Rock”. We got there, and there was a fee for parking in the parking lot, but it looked more or less on the honor system as you put coins into a box, but it seemed like most people were actually doing that. I wonder how full it would have been in the US.

We walked down and the rock was there, and it was vaguely the shape of a rock.

Heart rock was vaguely heart shaped.

But the cooler part was that beach was surrounded by rock walls and neat vegetation. Liam and Henry quickly found a cave to explore while the rest of us sat in the shade and talked for a while. It was tough to break them up, but we had plans to meet up again for dinner, and since our house was an hour from the beach and the restaurant was 30 minutes from our house, we had a bit of trek to pick up the kids and then go to the restaurant.

Nothing is cooler than a cave on the beach.

After a quick shower, we were off and met Henry’s family at Shogun Burger. They had one kiosk where you put in your request and then you sit at a table and they bring you what you ordered. A pretty good set up for English speakers since the kiosk spoke English and we were guaranteed to get our order right. The burgers were excellent, and I think we would have said that even if it hadn’t been months since we had a good burger.

We stopped at a 7 Eleven to get some bread, since we had been making so many sandwiches and marveled at the things in the freezer section. There was Denny’s brand frozen pasta (none of us could envision ordering pasta from Denny’s if it was "fresh") and 7 Eleven brand ice cream that looked very fancy. However, since we had heard rave reviews of food you could buy in a 7 Eleven that was high quality (like sushi), this didn't really live up to the hype.

We got home and put Liam to bed and then Megan and I stayed up too late trip planning and checking texts/emails.

Day 218

Our friends were doing things with their hub, and we felt a little bad about glomming onto the hub, so we decided to have a lazy day - plus, they were starting in a cave, and our kids have done enough caves. We went on a Pokemon hunt, and Megan joined Liam and me, and about half way through the walk she started to get anxious that we weren’t seeing enough of the island and taking advantage of our time there. But it was a little late to plan things, and I had to go to the store to get some things since we were having people over at our house the next night, so we ended up not doing much.

The hub was having a mom’s night out, and I encouraged Megan to join, but she was a little worried about Ubering there and back (it was 30 minutes away, and we hadn’t tried to Uber in Japan yet, although it looked to me to be very available). So we drove her there and then the rest of us had dinner with Henry and his dad. After trying to go an Italian restaurant that was booked, we ended up going to the Blue Taco, since it was open.

While I’m thinking about driving around, I’ll talk a little about driving in Okinawa. First, as someone who drives fast, the speed limits here are incredibly low. The fastest speed is 48 mph, and this is on two lane highways that in NJ would either be 55 or 65 mph. Second, many of the roads are narrow - often this is an optical illusion and when you are driving down a road that you feel must be meant for one car and then another car starts coming at you, there is, in fact enough room for 2. But only by going 4mph and holding your breath. Second (Part B), many of the turns are too narrow - at least for the large van that I am driving. One of these happens at the entrance to our street, where I am at an angle and I feel like at least one part of the car is 6 inches away from scratching against something during the entire turn. Turning into the Italian place’s parking lot had an incredibly tight turn, and I felt like just getting that van into the parking lot deserved a dinner, making getting turned away doubly frustrating.

Then, the whole rental car process was strange. Avis had all sorts of warnings about how dangerous it is to drive and how slippery the roads get in the rain. They required you to call the police if you get into any kind of accident or they won’t cover anything. They also made me look at a page of different Japanese street signs and sign off that I understood them (most were pretty obvious). They also require that I hand in all of the gas station receipts when I turn in the car, to prove that I only put diesel in it, and that it had to be filled at a gas station within 5 kilometers of the car rental place. I’ve never been so scared to drive anything in my life.

Japan drives on the left, and by now I am pretty good at it. Its second nature to be on the left, although I still turn on the windshield wiper sometimes when I try to put the blinker on. I’m glad that with all of these narrow streets that this is the third country that I've been to that drives on the left and I’ve had a bit of practice. Its now at the point where I worry a little bit about driving on the right side of the road when I get home.

Back to the story. The food there was actually pretty solid. We told Henry and Liam to take down their expectations for the pizza that they were about to eat since they were ordering pizza… at a taco place… in Japan. And yet it was good and they ate the whole thing.

We finished dinner around the same time that Megan did, so we swung by and picked her up and brought her home. I had Liam start to get ready for bed, and you can always tell when he’s tired (or has to go to the bathroom); if you tell him to do it, and there are no complaints, then he was ready.

I just realized that I don't have any pictures to go with this post, so here is a picture of Liam standing next to a hot sauce vending machine. Lily says that Japan is more advanced than us because everything is sold in vending machines. Is this what the future holds for the US? If so, I'm not sure I'm ready for it.

Apparently, this is what life in the US will be like in the not too distant future.

Day 219

We joined the hub on their trip to a cultural center, where all I knew was that we were going to do some origami (because that is more or less all that Henry's family knew). It took a while to find because it was in a building that didn’t say anything at all about a museum. But we eventually found everyone. It turns out that it was a museum about Eisa. Eisa is a traditional event honoring ancestors held during the lunar Bon festival, and nowadays is one of Okinawa's main traditional performing arts. As everyone knows, the Bon festival is what they were celebrating at the end of Karate Kid 2, when it got hijacked by Chozen Toguchi, who challenged Daniel in a fight to the death.

Liam and Henry showing off their Eisa skills.

Basically, it involved kind of like a drum line - dozens of people in lines hitting drums, but much more slowly with more intricate movements in between. There wasn’t really much to the museum, they showed a bunch of videos of old festivals. There was also a virtual reality set up to watch one.

Nothing attracts a crowd like VR.

After that we went to the courtyard of the mall, and the person who ran the hub brought some square paper and had his 11 year old son teach everyone origami. It wasn’t what I thought the day would be like, but his son was actually excellent at teaching everyone. As soon as the first round of throwing stars was made, the kids all ran around the courtyard, and the adults and older kids stayed to make the paper cranes.

It was a kids activity, but pretty quickly, only the adults were left.

Then we went to a mall where we ate lunch at a huge food court, and then went to a Pokemon Center (a giant Pokemon store). Keira and I, and our friend Jen, went to the grocery store to pick up some things since we were hosting two families for dinner at our house. Henry’s family, but also another family that had some teenagers - the first chance that our 3 kids would have to hang out with 3 kids more or less their own age.

The Pokemon store was a hit.

We got home about an hour before people were going to start showing up and did some cleaning of the house. The good news was that since we didn’t have a lot of stuff, we didn’t have a lot of stuff to clean up. Liam is always focused on when things will happen, and was getting antsy when it was 5:30 and people hadn’t shown. But by 5:45 everyone was there and he was happy.

We were doing a game night, so Megan sent me to bring everyone up to the second floor to play a game while she did the cooking (pasta, broccoli and garlic bread). The game was great fun and we paused it halfway to eat dinner and Megan was able to join afterwards. By the end, my team was winning by 12 points at the end, but we went first, so the other team had one more shot. I gave them 1 minute instead of 30 seconds, since there was no way to get that many points in 30 seconds, and of course, they scored 13 points and won the game, and Keira and Elenna (who were on my team) wouldn’t let me hear the end of it.

We played “Mafia” but one of the families was from Canada and they were familiar with a similar game based on were wolves instead of mafia, and we blended the rules of the two games and played. Overall, everyone had a good time, and it was not only fun to hang out with nice people who had kids our kids could talk to, but also to host people for a party - we often are the ones hosting at home, so it had been about 7 months since we had done anything like that.

Our first international, multinational party was a hit.

DAY 220

We got up the next day somewhat early to go on a Karate Tour. This was a tour that I had looked into a while ago, and booked largely because it was the only tour in Okinawa that was a karate tour, and the whole reason we were in Okinawa was because Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid movies was from Okinawa, and based on the movie, Okinawa was the birthplace of karate. So this specific tour was booked largely because there were no other options and it was the only thing we had planned for the 9 days in Okinawa.

This became less enticing as we became friends with Henry’s family in the Maldives and then randomly realized that we would be in Okinawa at the same time. This is one of those amazing coincidences that apparently aren’t that rare in the world school realms - everyone we met had a story of how they were meeting up with some people they met along the way and 1/2 of the time it was happenstance. But then we kind of hopped onto some activities of the Okinawa hub, and now we found a family that had kids our kids ages and we liked, we had more options and the tour was losing some of its appeal. That said, I kind of felt like I had to go through with it, given that karate was the reason we came to Okinawa.

One other thing bothered me about the tour - it was the only karate tour in Okinawa. If you ever search anything on Viator, you will usually find 4 of the same tour, with another 4-8 options if you also check Get Your Guide or Klook. But here there was only 1 tour. This made me a bit worried that there really wasn’t a lot of karate related stuff to do to make a tour worthwhile (otherwise more groups would do it). Once Megan found out that this was a karate history tour and not a karate class, she soured on the trip. But we went ahead anyway with low expectations.

Our driver picked us up, and it turned out it was just a private tour for us, and we went around in a minivan. The first location was back near the airport about an hour away. On the way down, we found out that our guide was Italian and came to Okinawa 15 years ago off and on, but then moved permanently 4 years ago to learn karate. His English was good, but it wasn’t great, and there were some language barriers along the way. This did not bode well for the tour.

The first stop was a shrine to Confuscious and then I asked the guide, if he knew anything about Confuscious - when he was alive, what he did, etc. But he was at a loss to answer and handed me a pamphlet that was in Japanese. I didn’t expect him to be an expert on Confuscious, but he brought us to the shrine, so I assumed that there was some karate tie in, but apparently there wasn’t. This did not bode well for the rest of the tour.

We then walked through Matsayama Park and looked at some monuments to some karate masters from the past. It was mildly interesting, but we didn’t get many facts about what we were seeing. Then we went to Fukusyuen Garden which was quite pretty, with the city surrounding it and easily the best thing we did.

A very pretty oasis in the middle of the city.

The koi pond was pretty and there was a neat cave/fountain area that Liam could have run around all day.

A series of caves with a waterfall? Liam could have stayed there all day.

There were also a series of statues of the animals that represented birth years,

Elenna's birth year animal is the dragon, the most powerful of the animals. Something she we often remind us of.

I love seeing the architecture.

Liam can't pass up a picture.

Then we went to some other shrine area where they took us into a room with some small statutes in it. It really wasn’t clear why we were there per se. But the Japanese woman who worked there kept taking pictures of us in her place, so at least she got something out of it. But then they showed me a picture of Steven Seagal visiting the place, so I had to get my picture taken there too.

Steven Seagal stood in that very spot. But obviously didn't look as tough as we did.

Then he took us to lunch and the soba place was very good - everyone enjoyed it, even Liam ate everything. By now, our kids were dragging and wanting to go home. I was feeling the same way - I haven’t really seen much in Okinawa that blew me away (other than some of the beaches and natural rock formations). But we were going to a museum and then to a dojo, so the light was at the end of the tunnel.

He drove us to this large building and told us that it housed a lot of office workers that try to spread karate around. We walked around the building for 10 minutes and I started to wonder if we were just going to a an office building. But then he took us to another building in the complex which was an actual museum. There were a couple of neat exhibits where you virtually tried to put out a candle with punch, or did some strength training exercises with vases filled with weights, etc. There was an area showing a movie that had people doing some karate - it was all very slow and methodical, with periodic fast punches or kicks, but then followed with slow arm movements. Within 5 minutes at least 3 of the 6 of us were asleep at at point in time for the next 5 minutes. So we all left and then left the museum.

By the end of the tour, Liam had mastered karate.

The guide said we would go to a dojo, and even I was dragging at this point, but I confirmed with him that we were at least heading back to our house and he said we were. We drove for about 40 minutes through bad traffic, and then pulled up to a dojo that looked closed. He walked to the door and read the signs and realized that it was closed. But he said he knew of another one. After another 10 minutes in the car, we got to another dojo that looked closed. Liam asleep, but since our guide said someone was there, we woke him up and walked over there. There wasn’t anyone there, but there was randomly a horse in the front year. At this point, we all just decided to go home.

We had about 2 hours to relax before we met up with the larger family for dinner and then karaoke night. After dragging everyone through a long boring tour, I figured I couldn't let Liam disrupt whatever rest they were looking for, so we went on a Pokemon hunt for an hour and then I had to take a quick nap before heading out.

We went out to eat at Shogun Burger again, because it was really good. Henry’s family didn’t join this part, but they did meet up with us karaoke. Karaoke was fun, for the most part we all just sang the songs if we knew them, there wasn’t much solo singing going on. About ⅓ of the songs were Taylor Swift, and another ⅓ were from Disney original movies like Zombies, Descendants and High School Musical 2. Liam was a bit of a terror, but was pretty funny when we let him sing some Taylor swift songs.

Liam would look at the words on the screen while he sang, despite not being able to read them.

Day 221

This was our last full day in Okinawa, so we knew we wanted to spend it with Henry’s family. The one problem was we didn’t know exactly what we wanted to do. The plans started out either the aquarium or the beach, then turned into an underwater viewing station, to maybe a hike, before finally going back to the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium + a stop at Pineapple Park. Yes a pineapple park.

Unfortunately, this meant that we didn’t get a jump on the day, and by the time we left for the aquarium, it was noon, and we didn’t get there until 1:15. We hadn’t eaten lunch yet, but we went into the aquarium because we were behind schedule. The goal was to go to the American Village again and do some shopping and bowling at night. On this trip, Lily had school work, and Keira had been trying to get in touch with one of her friends for some time and finally did right before we left, so she stayed behind, leaving Elenna and Liam as the passengers (a fact which Elenna held against Keira for some time).

The aquarium was pretty neat. Liam was complaining about going there, but once we got in, he and Henry stopped at every exhibit and looked at it. Elenna said to me that if she was in charge, we would have finished the aquarium 10x faster, and I probably would have done in 2x faster. But it was certainly worth a visit.

The aquarium was worth a visit.

The main attraction, certainly for us, was that they had a whale shark there. Since we had unsuccessfully gone on a whale shark hunt twice in the Maldives with Henry’s family, we had to check it out. They had an amazing viewing area where you could see it and a bunch of rays - almost as good a view as we got snorkeling in the Maldives. But not quite.

We finally saw a whale shark!

After that, we went to the Nago Pineapple Park. This was something that Megan had seen on-line and reminded us of the Dole plantation in Hawaii. I suggested it to Henry’s family and said I’m sure its a tourist trap but maybe worth a look since it was on the way back from the aquarium. Henry’s dad said that it was definitely worth a look - it had a "so bad its good" potential.

If so, it really lived up to that potential. To get from the parking lot to the entrance, you had to take a pineapple themed bus. From there, you had to wait in line and take a self driving golf cart through part of the park. All along, they told you facts about pineapples. There was also a Nago Pineapple Park theme song that they played throughout the rides/park, complete with dance moves. We were sure that none of us were going to get that out of our heads, even though we don’t speak Japanese.

The place was pineapple-fied.

The place was a bit run down, and maybe it would have looked better if the day hadn’t turned overcast. There were signs throughout that showed you the way that you had to go, but it meant that you had to walk the entire park and couldn’t really jump ahead to a part that you wanted to see more. There was a large greenhouse place that we walked through, and most of it was two floors high as we wound our way around.

It was actually a pretty neat, almost botanical garden.

Then we got to a section that was a dinosaur themed section. I’m not really sure why it was there, but there were a bunch of animatronic dinos there.

I'm not sure why this section was here, but it was as good as it looks.

We finally got to a cafe - by now it was 4:30 and we hadn’t had lunch yet, but it only had ice cream, so we pressed on. Then we got to another place that had fresh pineapple and then some pineapple based baked goods. The problem was that neither Elenna nor I like pineapples, so we ate some things that were fine, but not what we would have eaten in an ideal world.

The funny thing was that the food areas and gift shops were all VERY nice. So much so that if you saw pictures of those places and the park itself, there is no way you would think that they were park of the same complex. I wish we were staying longer in Okinawa, and then we would have bought some of the pineapple rum, but since we couldn’t take it with us, we didn’t buy any. But I did get a pineapple shirt (even though I don’t like pineapples), likely because that Nago theme song brainwashed me.

Eventually, the path led us to the exit and it was time to say goodbye to Henry and his family. It was very cute because the two boys were clearly upset that they had to say goodbye. We invited the family to the beer olympics, so hopefully we get to see them in a few months.

This kind of picture is always a sign that it was a good day.

We got home around 6:30, and Megan’s plan was to eat everything that was left in the house for dinner, which meant that dinner was baked potatoes and garlic bread. Too late we realized that we could have cooked some pasta and I made a salad at the end, but I don’t think anyone ate any. Lily found out that she was going to be one of the leaders of her robotics team next year, so we went out to Baskin Robbins to celebrate. Megan wasn’t feeling well, so she stayed behind.

Day 222

We returned the rental car, and one of the many things that the rental car said was that we had to refill within 5 km of the drop off, complete with a map where it circled all of the area within 5km. We hadn’t needed to fill our gas tank at all since we got to Okinawa, despite going 30 minutes away virtually every time we drove. On our Karate tour, our guide got gas (always a pet peeve of mine - he must of known before picking us up that he needed gas), but at least I watched him do it. Pretty standard self fill, except that there is a yellow button looking thing about the size of the palm of your hand. Apparently, you are supposed to put your hand there to remove any static electricity that could start a fire while filling your tank. Makes me wonder what is wrong with Japanese gas stations that they need it, while also wondering if we need that in the US.

We needed gas on the way to the airport and ended up refilling about 11 miles from the airport so we will see if they fine us. The car rental place is about 20 minutes from the airport, but the shuttle came right away and we checked in without an issue and got to the gate. Megan and I tried to find a lounge, but couldn’t so we ate a little convenience store food before the flight. The flight had some turbulence and didn’t serve lunch, so when we landed we were all hungry.

There wasn’t a great way to get to Thomas Land from the airport (there was a direct bus once a day that we just missed), so we arranged a driver to take us there. It took a little while to track him down, but then we were on our way to Thomas Land.

We decided to splurge on the Thomas themed room, which was really well themed out. It had Thomas, Percy and James in the dining room, and the other rooms were all well themed.

The one drawback, was that there was one bathroom, and in the bathroom there was a tub, but no proper shower, just a hand held sprayer on an adjustable poll on the wall. Further, like many hotel rooms and places we have stayed at, there was no shower door/shower curtain, so there was nothing stopping the water from getting out of the shower and onto the bathroom floor broadly. One of the showers in Seoul essentially guaranteed that if you took a shower, the toilet would be covered in water. At least here, the shower was a different room than the toilet, but it meant that if you walked into that room for whatever reason, your feet would be soaked, even though there was a drain on the ground. I wasn't a big fan of the shower room.

Everyone was tired so we wanted to have room service, but they don’t have room service, so I went downstairs to a takeout restaurant to get some food. While I was waiting for it, I made a spa reservation for Megan. Meanwhile, Megan wasn’t feeling well, and had done some google searches for doctors, but thought that it would be a good idea to ask the people at the hotel for recommendations. It took a really long time and didn’t really result in a recommendation she felt comfortable with.

The next day, Megan went to a doctor, while the 5 of us went to Fuji Q Highland Park. The key attraction (for us) was Thomas Land, but there were a few roller coasters that looked good. Elenna was too scared to go on the one near the entrance, so Keira, Lily and I went and it was pretty good but a little rickety. Then we went into Thomas Land.

I had never seen a warning sign for a ride that said that you had to be under 65 years old to ride it, but it got me excited to go on it.

The overall park looked a bit like Great Adventure, in that there were a bunch of big rides that you could see from anywhere in the park, and although often the ride would be themed, there was not much tying one ride into another ride, so it was a little disjointed. One exception to this was Thomas Land, which you entered under an overpass and entered an old-timey Sodor, with shops along the walkway.

Liam was SOOOO happy to be there. He was literally skipping from one ride to the next. He likes being at Disney, but he is usually dragged from one ride to the next and takes some time to warm up to rides. Here, all the rides were for little kids and there was no concern over whether he would like it or not.

Liam was soo happy to be at Thomas Land.

Megan rejoined us after getting some meds, and wasn’t feeling up to roller coasters, so she went on Thomas Land rides with Liam, while the four of us went on a different coaster. It was really good - reminded us a bit of Tron in the ride and theming, but it also went backwards.

We ate at the Thomas themed restaurant - the food options were interesting - chicken nuggets and fries were an option, but the kids meal had noodles and a whole host of food that Liam wouldn’t eat. But the place was cute, and there were some families that were celebrating birthdays, and they had Thomas come out and sang “happy birthday”. Very cute.

There were some fun rides in the Thomas section.

One other land that was well themed was the Naruto area. He is an anime character that does martial arts and has super powers. You walked into his land and there were statues of the characters along the shops and restaurants down the avenue. There was a shooting game that resembled Toy Story Mania, and I loved it. Of course, I got the high score on this one too.

Possibly the coolest thing about the park is that Mt Fuji is clearly visible in the background through half of the park. At least when it isn’t covered in clouds. When we arrived the night before, it was cloudy and rainy, so we didn’t appreciate it, but the first day at the park it was generally clear. The main problem was capturing it well on a camera. As big as Mt Fuji looks in real life, one you raise your camera, it somehow automatically becomes this barely seen thing in the background.

Its cool to see Mt Fuji. It was much closer than it looked in these photos.

The girls started to start talking about going home around noon, but the park closes at 5, so Megan and I had us stay longer, in part because it looked like the next day might not be great weather. Around 3pm, we decided to go on their river rapids ride, despite protests from Keira that we should do it last. It wasn’t clear that people were getting that wet, so we decided to go, but as we stood in line, I was increasingly worried that we would be wet. They sold ponchos in the line to the ride, which isn’t a good sign. There was a little snafu with the ride, since Megan accidentally bought a ticket that only went to Thomas Land, but she paid extra to go on the ride and we went on.

Turns out, Keira was right and we should have done it last. I think that since people bought ponchos while in the line, and then recycled them before they exited, more people probably used the ponchos than we appreciated. We were all wet, and decided to pay for 3 minutes in one of those outdoor dryers that they sometimes have outside of water rides - Liam suggested it, and then kept repeating how great an idea it was until you agreed with him. Then he would wait 3 seconds and start saying his idea was really great and didn't we agree?

In part because it was getting cold, and our kids who were looking to go home 3 hours earlier, were now in full “go home mode”, so we went back. The kids wanted to eat in the room, so Megan and I went out to eat at the buffet in the restaurant because it said it had good views of Mt Fuji. Because of this, we went there are 5:45 (sunset at 6:15) and when we first got there, we were the only people there. It was a little awkward to have that much food all over the place, and being the only guests.

The view of Mt Fuji was amazing.

But slowly people trickled in, and then a big tour bus must have come because about 30 people came in together. But by now it was 7pm and it felt like it missed the point to be there when you couldn’t see the mountain anymore.

Day 224

The next day, we rope dropped the park again. One annoying thing about the park was that when you bought tickets you had your picture taken. This allowed you to get into the park, but you also had to do facial recognition every time you went on any ride. This was because entry to the park was free (you could walk around and buy food) or you could buy a pass for an individual ride, or just the Thomasland rides, or all of the rides, and the people there didn’t know what you bought. It was great from a flexibility perspective, I suppose, but it meant that every line required people to face scan, so boarding rides where there otherwise was a limited line would take a few minutes each time.

Since Megan didn’t go on any coasters the day before, she and the girls went on the 2nd coaster from the day before (the first coaster was closed because it was too windy). Liam and I went in search of Thomas Land rides, but although they opened the park 30 minutes early for people who stayed at the hotel, only a couple of rides were open then, and none of the rides Liam would do were open.

The second day was much colder than the first and it rained/hailed off and on throughout the morning. The girls went on a pretty cool ride that essentially looked like it was a house of escape rooms (where you had to solve a puzzle of complete some task before going to the next room). Liam was too young to join, so we went to Thomas Land in the hail.

Liam's favorite ride was the Bouncing Winston.

We largely did the same rides on Day 2 as Day 1 (except the river rapids ride), but that was fine. After lunch at the Thomas restaurant (again), Lily wanted to go back and do schoolwork while the other three wanted to watch Gossip Girl, so I took Liam to a play area that we hadn’t been to before. It was for little kids, it had a couple of train tables and a small climbing area, but Liam loved it.

Liam loved the train table about as much as he liked any ride in the park, so we could saved some money doing this trip slightly differently.

After that, we went around did a bunch of Thomas Land rides (the tiny coaster 4x and mini log flume 6x) and then the Naruto ride again (3x) because I wanted to do that one.

I had some tea in Naruto land.

Liam said that he was ready to go home, so I let him play Pokemon on the way back and we walked around the park for an hour until my phone ran out of batteries.

We went on a double decker carousel, and got some churros. The girls would be jealous (about the churros), but since they don't read this blog, they'll never know.

After dinner, we all relaxed, but Megan more than the rest of us, since she got her massage.

The next day we got up around 9am and packed. I went out and got breakfast and brought it back to the room. Then we left at 11 to go to Tokyo. I hired a car to do it, which was much more expensive than trying to take the bus. At the beginning of the trip, we talked about showing our kids how to travel on a budget, and that you didn’t have to spend a lot of money while traveling. And there was talk of taking a lot of buses and public transportation, to show them it was possible. But as this trip has gone on, my desire to do that has waned. The thought of getting 6 people and our luggage onto a bus, and then getting an Uber or taking the metro from there to our hotel seemed like a lot of work. Meanwhile, I was getting fatigued about looking up transit schedules (I had spent much of the night before looking at how to get from Budapest to Felben Austria, and wasn’t in the mood to figure out which bus to take at what time. And since Megan has made 95% of the decisions, she was even less interested in spending the time).

We got to the hotel at 1pm, but our room wasn’t ready so we went out to eat. A bunch of restaurants were closing at 2, and an American Diner place nearby got great reviews, so we went there. But when we got there, the place could only seat about 15 people (and we were 6), so we were afraid of how long it would take. Keira has an obsession about Hard Rock Cafes, and there is one a 10 minute walk away, so we went there for lunch. It didn’t get great reviews, but was good for starving people.

Unfortunately, Liam started to cry when we told him to eat his pizza, and it quickly became clear that he wasn’t right. When we got back to the hotel and got to our room, we found that he had a 103 degree fever. So he went to sleep while I did some laundry and then went grocery shopping. The 7-Eleven had about half of the things I was looking for, so I went to a Lawsons (which is basically the same thing) and got about 80% of what I was looking for. Then I went back to put the wash into the dryer and went to a real supermarket to get the last of the things.

The laundry room was a central one for the hotel and I was using all three washing machines and then all three dryers. The washing machines automatically added soap, which was nice, but the dryers took a long time to dry. You bought it in 30 minute increments, and after the first 30 minutes it wasn’t even close. After the second 30 minutes, it was a little dry. So I put it in for another hour, and then went to a barber that I saw on my travels around. He didn’t speak great English, but between his ability and Google Translate, I think I got a pretty good hair cut.

Liam’s fever had spike to 103.5, and Megan was worried about leaving him with Keira while the rest of our went out to Kura (a conveyor belt sushi restaurant that we have gone to in NJ). She gave him to Motrin, and 15 minutes later he was down to 102, and we felt ok leaving Keira in charge. Then we walked 20 minutes to the restaurant.

Elenna loves Kura, and I find the food to be solid, not spectacular. The cool thing is that every table is placed along a conveyor belt, and they put small plates of food on the conveyor belt and you take what you want. So there is constantly food passing by your table. You can separately order things like soups that are delivered by track right to your table as well.

Most of the things come on plates, and when you are done, you put the plates through a slot and after 5 plates, you have the chance to win a plastic ball with a toy inside. Usually its pretty lame. Despite the fact that we ordered 23 things with plates, we didn’t get any balls, which was a bit disappointing. That said, the dinner for the 4 of us only cost $37, so that was clearly a win.

It looks like I didn't take any pictures from dinner. But I did take a picture next to a steak vending machine. Maybe the Japanese are living the not too distant future.

We got home and Liam was feeling much better. While we were out, he ate 3 sandwiches and half a container of grapes. We hung out for a little and then all went to bed.

DAY 225

We slept in to give Liam some time to get to some rest, and then headed off to a Mochi making class. We took the metro there, and it was pretty easy after we bought the metro card - I’m not sure if we had to buy the card in person, but we went to the English speaking train desk to get the tickets so they could explain everything (later we found out that we didn't need to go to that desk). Megan used Google Maps that tracked us and showed us where we were every step of the way, including how much of the train ride we had completed. This was good because it was confusing, since once we got on the train, we realized that we weren’t 100% sure if we were taking it in the right direction (we were).

Elenna and Lily had wanted to eat at McDonalds at some point on the trip, so when we got off the train, and couldn’t decide where to eat, we ended up going there (so for the record, 2 of our first 3 meals in Tokyo were Hard Rock and McDonalds). We went there in part because Liam wanted to eat there and he wasn’t feeling great. Of course, he felt worse and worse and we waited for the food and then wouldn’t eat any of its (pancakes and ice cream). We gave him another dose of medicine, and 15 minutes later, he popped right up and acted normal (its amazing how well some medicines work). But his stomach still hurt and he wouldn’t eat anything.

The mochi making class was fun. We ended up making about 5 types of mochi.

This class was one of the few times when our kids recommended an activity (that wasn't sitting in the hotel room).

Mochi is a chewy, sticky, doughy dessert which is generally fine, but not something I would go much out of my way to eat. Elenna wanted to do it and we have found that the kids always enjoy experiences like this over seeing temples and such. It was a good time and the mochi all looked great, and most of it was good.

Most of the mochi was good (or at least as good as mochi normally is).

Liam was generally good, a little out of it but at least behaved well. The one thing was that he hates having dirty hands and mochi is so sticky that he didn’t ever want to touch it. But I get that - even after I washed my hands, I still felt they were covered in mochi.

Liam was OK stirring, as long as he didn't get his hands dirty.

We went back home because my daughters are always looking to sit in the hotel room, and Megan was coming down with a bad headache, and Liam could use some rest - although he was acting better and better. After I did a little bit of handwriting work with him, I went out to explore.

Megan asked me to go to Ueno park, which was right on the other side of the train station, to see if it was worth visiting, so I went over there to check it out. Its a pretty big area, and I walked around it for about an hour, and probably only saw about half of it. My favorite thing happened when I walked over to this 5 story pagoda in the park and came upon Ahsoka.

The force was with me that day.

The whole area was neat, but it was getting dark and I still hadn’t been to the store yet to get some things for dinner. I went to the pharmacy to get something to help Liam with his constipation, and talked to a pharmacist who gave me a recommendation. Then I went to the store to get some food and look for any kind of Easter things I could find, but I didn’t have any luck. Megan and I have been half looking ever since we got to Japan, but haven’t seen anything remotely Easter.

For dinner we ate some bread that we bought at a bakery (still not doing well on the Japanese food front). Everyone was feeling much better by dinner time.

DAY 226

We got up and went to Takeshita Street - a neat street full of candy shops, stores, and such. We went there because they have a micro pig cafe - similar to the cat cafe we went to in Seoul, but with small pigs. Keira wanted to skip it, but she wanted to do the activities later in the day too, so she had to come.

We sat on the floor and they put blankets on our laps in case the pigs peed on us (luckily they didn’t). The pigs would come over and just climb right into your lap and sit there. Often, they would climb on top of each other and usually they didn’t seem to mind if someone was laying on top of them. It was kind of neat - but the pigs aren’t really as soft as I would want them to be.

You can see how Liam isn't a fan of this, but Keira is able to put on a brave face for the pictures.

After about 5 minutes the kids were all ready to go. Liam wouldn’t even pet a pig in someone else’s lap. Meanwhile, Megan and I each had 5 pigs climb into our laps at one time - maybe because we had the biggest laps. But I felt bad because some people in the cafe had no pigs, and a worker would periodically come around and take one from me or Megan and redistribute them, only for them to gravitate back to us. Despite the kids wanting to go almost immediately, we stayed the 30 minutes we paid for.

Then we walked over to a art latte cafe, where they can make any picture and put it on top of your drink. Most of us ordered hot chocolate. We were very impressed by what the artists were able to do - it really looked amazing.

Elenna got a drink of Uncle Mike's favorite Pokemon (Chickeon), while I got a shameless plug for our website/instagram.

After that, we went to Eggs N’ Things to get lunch and ate pancakes with huge amounts of whip cream fruit. Then we split up and Megan and Elenna walked to get Elenna some new shoes, the other two girls went shopping for presents for friends, and Liam and went Pokemon hunting. Apparently, when the girls went to the store, there was a line and Megan and Elenna stood there for a couple of minutes before someone came over and told them that they couldn’t stand there in line until they had a ticket. But the next ticket distribution wasn’t for another 10 minutes, and that ticket could say that they would have to come back an hour later. Luckily, they were able to get into the shoe store relatively quickly. We all met up at a cotton candy store and got giant cotton candy.

I appreciated that they had a glass wall between the customers and the candy makers. The cotton candy was big enough to share, and I rarely think dessert is big enough to share.

Then we went over to Team Labs - a type of museum with interactive exhibits. We had been taking the subway everywhere and were getting pretty good at it - or at least Megan was. Google Maps was excellent at telling us how to use public transportation - including which track to go to, and then giving us a real time status bar as we got near our stops. We got to Team labs about half an hour before our allotted time, so we walked around a little and then headed over.

The place was split into different areas - the first was water. In this section, you started by walking up a hill with water pouring down. Then you went through the rest of the activities barefoot. Some of them had different textures to walk on. One had water about 10 inches deep to walk through.

There were a lot of cool exhibits to walk through.

One had a light display that gave me all sorts of ideas for my next xmas light display.

I just need to figure out how to bring in the mirrors to complete my xmas decorations.

The kids have a tendency to see any museum or activity as something to complete and move on, and rarely take any time to enjoy anything. So Megan was constantly slowing us down, making the kids even more frustrated. We had heard that the museum was a 1-2 hour experience, but we assumed that it was 1 hour long.

There were also some colorful obstacle courses where you had to step across things to get to the other side.

After water, we went to the forest area. There were a bunch of neat exhibits, including one that (because we are Disney fans) reminded me of the Animator’s Palate on a Disney Cruise. You colored in a picture and then whatever you drew was animated to move across the screen.

Keira's butterfly looked cool flying across the wall.

The last place we went was the Garden exhibit, where there were orchids hanging from the ceiling, suspended on wires. Since orchids don’t need soil, it was a pretty cool set up. At this point we were 2 hours into the experience, it was dinner time and everyone was ready to go. Lily turned to me and said that she wished we had gotten there sooner, because the flowers were her favorite part.

Lily could have stayed in the garden area for a bit longer.

We took the train home, but my battery had died (or we would have had a lot more pictures) and MEgan’s was dying so Keira navigated us home. After getting on the right train, but in the wrong direction a couple of times, Keira got the hang of it. Everyone was hungry, so we took one dinner recommendation that nearly everyone who has gone to Japan has given us - to go to 7-Eleven and get food there for dinner. The food there was generally solid, but I can’t say that its a must have - but it was quick which was what we needed most.

Our friends, the Livingstons, were coming in that night, so we waited around for them and did some Disney planning. Megan can’t do any activity without planning it out, and since this was our first time at Disney Japan, we had to figure out what rides were there, what we wanted to hit first and the best overall plan of attack. So we had a war room set up.

Disney vacations don't just happen, they are made.

Then the Livingstons showed up and they came to our room and said a quick hi, but we all had to go to bed since we planned to leave the hotel at 7:15 in the morning to make our Sumo Wrestling tour.

Day 227

Liam summed up how everyone was feeling when I woke him up and he whined “Why are you making me get up so early?” Of course, he was the one who wanted to stay up late for the Livingstons the night before, but he hasn’t quite figured out the cause and effect of staying up late.

We got some bread at the bakery in the train station as we waited for the guide to show. We met up with our tour guide and two families from the US (one from San Fran and one from Detroit). Then we took the train to the sumo stable. We had given him some medicine, so between that and the lack of sleep, its no surprise that Liam had to be carried and then quickly fell asleep on the train, and then waking up every time we switched trains, only to fall back asleep.

Liam was knocked out pretty much all morning.

Sumo matches happen every other month, so there were no matches to watch in April, so we only watched a practice. They didn’t do the ceremonial stomping on the ground that you always see (I think because it was just a practice). Essentially, there were 4 wrestlers, and they took turns wrestling - if you won, you stayed in, unless you were too tired to go on.

A real sumo practice.

It was pretty interesting, but really started to become repetitive after 15 minutes. But the part of the practice we saw was only 30 minutes, and then they had a wrestler come over and answer questions while we ate some beef stew. He was the only white wrestler there - apparently stables can only have one foreigner at a time in their ranks - and he came from Israel. We learned a bit about the levels of sumo - the bottom 4 you join a stable but don’t get paid, you can’t have a wife or kids, you can’t have any other job and you have to live at the stable. The top two levels you get paid and can have a family and can live outside the stable. The top wrestler makes about $3m per year, but can make more that that if they have endorsements.

Then they let us take pictures with some wrestlers and try to move them. The wrestler we did this with was probably the worst wrestler of the four that we saw practice. That said, I couldn’t even make him budge, and he would generally laugh at us while we tried. the good news was that Liam was starting to perk up.

Even Megan and Liam combined couldn't move him.

After sumo, we took the train back to Takeshita Street and walked around a bit. I bought some waffle things with rainbow cheese inside - pretty solid. I also got one with peanut butter because I assumed Liam would need something at some point. We found a place to eat in a food court, but split up with the Livingstons since seating was limited. When we were done, I went back to Takeshita Street because tomorrow was Easter and we needed some supplies.

A picture of a Livingston carrying Liam.

Then we walked over to where our night time food tour was. We were to meet at the Hachiko Statue. I hadn’t heard of this, but apparently the kids read the story of the dog who met his master every day at 5pm as he got off the train from work. It new the schedule and the way to the station. Then, the owner died, and the dog kept going back there every day looking for him.

The story of Hachiko is a story that every kid in school is made to read because teachers want to see little kids cry.

The statue was right next to the Shibuya Crossing - a famous walkway in Japan where its really crowded. I’ve seen streets in NYC that were very reminiscent - there were also building with giant screens all around - a little bit like Time Square (but just a very little bit). I think today its more famous for being famous, as about ⅓ of the people crossing the street now are taking pictures of crossing the street.

Shibuya was basically Times Square.

We met up with our guide Ren, who was great. He took us to 4 different places, all with great food. Dandadan was the first place, and our favorite of them all - including this chicken wing thing. The next place had a bunch of fried food. The third place had a takeout window, but we didn’t end up eating the food, because we walked to the fourth place which was a sake bar, with some very good sake.

Enjoying the food tour. Also, another Livingston carrying Liam.

The kids generally did a good job of trying everything. Lily viewed to try to try everything and she did - including the salmon and the shrimp. Even Elenna and Keira tried more things than they normally would. Even I tried everything.

Everyone did a good job of trying the food. Even me.

The one weird thing about the tour was that it was basically in the red light district - there were strip clubs on pretty much every street corner. But it still felt like a very safe neighborhood.

Another Livingston carrying Liam.

After that, the Livingstons were crashing (it was pretty impressive that they had lasted that long after flying in the night before) so we all went back to the hotel and went to bed.

Day 228

I had arranged a walking tour of Tokyo the next day. Before we left, we did a quick Easter "celebration" looking for Easter eggs.

Easter in Japan is a little less elaborate than in the US.

We started at 10am to give us some time to rest. We started out at Senso-Ji, a 400 year old buddhist temple that was largely destroyed in WW2, but then rebuilt 40 years ago.In front of the temple there was a marketplace, and I’m a big fan of the architecture. In fact, when I was here for business, it was the only place that I went in my few hours of free time.

The Senso Ji was neat.

We tried a bunch of food from the food stalls in the market - types of mochi, some waffle type things that had red bean paste in them (most people didn’t like them, but I thought that they were fine.

There was also a place to get your fortune told. You did this by shaking a metal tin until a chopstick sized piece of wood came out with a number on it. Then you took the fortune with that number on it. Liam got a great fortune - I think literally the best you can have.

Liam will have a bright future.

Then we went to a technology area and visited an arcade. This was the one place that Liam wished we could spend more time.

Liam would have stayed at this part of the tour for hours.

Then we went to a neighborhood called Golden Gai, that was famous for its bar scene. We were contemplating going there the night before before people felt too tired to go. During the day, it looked like it could be cool - with a bunch of small bars - often only about 15ft by 20ft big, packed together.

Then we got lunch at place in a food court type area that our guide recommended because it had all types of food. The food was ok, but the big benefit of being there was that a Japanese boy band performed right in front of us. There wasn’t much of a crowd, so they were still just starting out, but I’m going to be able to say that I saw Hanatokaze before they went big.

Hanatokaze now has a strong following in NJ.

After that, Megan and Lily went to Disneyland to get our vacation package, while the rest of us went back to the hotel. I took Liam to get his hair cut, and once again, we didn’t get the haircut that Megan was looking for.

Here is the before picture.

When we got back from the haircut, we went off to see a Japanese baseball game - the Swallows vs the Giants. I’m not a big baseball fan, but I had heard that it was an experience so we went. It was interesting to see - there were sections that clearly home and some that were clearly away. Both teams had bands in the outfield sections and the fans there were constantly singing some song for their respective teams.

Throughout the stadium they had women selling beer and ice cream. I felt bad for them - the beer was on mini-kegs on their backs, and I’m not sure that I could have carried that around for 3 hours.

I'm not sure that I could carry around drinks all game long.

A couple of other things that were unusual. When one of the home players hit a home rum, everyone in the home team sections took out mini umbrellas and bounced them up and down. They weren’t fan giveaways or anything, so people apparently came with them or just bought them there, but it looked like at least ⅓ of the home fans had them. They made a cool effect as many were iridescnet and reflected the stadium lights well.

The food was also different - no peanuts or cracker jacks - I bought something that looked close, but was some sort of potato puff thing. In the food stands in the stadium, they had japanese food - spring rolls, rice, bowls, soups, dumpling type things. They had hotdogs, but they didn’t seem to be on buns. There was a dominos pizza stand, but the pizza looked adventurous - no plain cheese options. They also had a Baskin Robbins. Megan saw people with churros and ice cream, so I spent about 2 innings looking for them, and then standing in line. Unfotunately, the churros weren’t as good as they should have been (not enough cinamon sugar).

It was 9pm at the bottom of the 8th, and I told everyone we should go back. I think at least 7 of the 10 people were happy to leave and the rest were ambiguous. We had to get back home because we had to pack and leave by 6am to get to Disneyland.

DAY 229

We got up early and were in our Ubers by 6:10 to get to Disney. We had to drop off our bags at the hotel, and checkin was at 7 (we got there at 6:45, but they made us wait until 7 for some reason). We had heard that that the lines at Tokyo Disney were really long, so we got to the gates around 7:45am to wait for the 9am opening.

If you come to Disney with us, you will see a level of logistics that would make Amazon jealous. You can make reservations for rides once you get into the park, and in our planning session (really Megan, Lily and Keira’s planning session), we had written down all of the rides and the preference for how we would book them (you can only book one at a time, and they will sell out eventually, so the key is to get online and book as soon as possible, so that your next window to book the next ride comes up as soon as possible. Then you set an alarm to remind you to book the next ride). That was almost exhausting just writing that.

The planning continued until they let us into the park.

So once we entered the park, I was steering us to the Tinker Belle ride, the first ride we wanted to ride without a reservation (but since the park just opened, the line wasn’t long). While I was doing this, Megan, Keira and Lily were walking to the ride and trying to book our next reservations.

Our family has this down to a science such that we rarely ever wait in the lines, and just use these reservations. This is important because the lines in Japan can quickly jump to over 100 minutes, depending on the lines. The Livingstons weren’t much of a Disney family until we got them to go to Disneyland with us, but now they have gone multiple times (including to Paris Disney) and know what they are doing, and were a great addition to the trip. Getting 10 people around Disney is actually a bit of an annoying thing to try to do (at any point in time, someone has to go to the bathroom, or is hungry or doesn’t want to go on a ride or wants to shop). But it worked very well.

Monsters Inc isn't a ride in Florida.

In part it worked because everyone got along well. Megan and I went to college with the parents and son is Lily’s age, and the daughter is 2 years younger than Elenna. And they all really like Liam, which helps Megan and me out a lot. They would take turns carrying him and Rosie (11) probably carried him more than anyone else (including me) during our time there.

I think that Rosie is stronger than I am.

He also was drawn to Anthony, and usually wanted to go rides with him. At one point I said to Megan that I think I rode more times next to her on rides than we have in 18 years.

Its a small world after all.

The biggest problem was that 5 rides were down for maintenance, including some big rides like Space Mountain and Peter Pan. So a park that normally is crowded had fewer big rides open, creating longer lines. The good news is that our family knows how to maximize Disney, so it ended up being more of a problem only in so far as we would have wanted to go on those rides and now we don’t know if we ever will go on them.

Toon town was fun, even though I was almost hit by a safe. Plus, we got to meet Mickey.

The best ride in the park (and according to Lily and my rating systems) one of the best rides in any Disney park) was Beauty and the Beast. It was largely just a ride through the story, which is often a pretty lame ride, but it was so well done that it was amazing. In general, pretty much every ride there was themed well and did a good job of making you feel like you were in the land from the movie.

The one problem with military precision, is that you are so busy running from one ride to the next that you don’t have time to stop and look around. We didn’t even get a group picture in front of the castle, which is usually a must.

Megan loves parades and shows and fireworks, so we got tickets to the Electric Light Parade, which was a bit nostalgic because they used to have that in the US when we were kids but then did away with it. It was different from when we were kids, but it was still pretty neat.

We got great seats for the parade.

In the vacation package that we booked, we had to book a dinner, so we booked Chef Mickey’s, which is our favorite restaurant in Orlando. The reservation was 15 minutes from the park, but started just when the parade was supposed to end, so we had Lily, Elenna and Rosie run over and tell them that we were coming.

Although the Tokyo Chef Mickey’s is a buffet like the Florida one, it was much worse. Even if you ignore the fact that my favorite thing from the Orlando Chef Mickey’s is the unlimited tater tots and chicken nuggets, the food just wasn’t as good. Also, here, like almost everywhere in Tokyo and the Disneyland, only served regular coke, not diet or zero sugar.

DAY 230

We got up for a 6:30am buffet breakfast which was an unusual experience. The food was largley what we would eat for lunch or dinner in Japan - miso soup, pasta with meat sauce, etc. There were pastries, and some runny eggs. But I was ok with it all, because there were tater tots. Its also a good thing to start a day at Disney with a full stomach.

Once again, the trying to get rides starts right when you enter the park, so its about running to the first ride while planning the next one.

This day we were going to Disney Sea (the sister park to Disneyland). We had heard that most people think that its the best Disney park, and were excited to see what it was all about. It was absolutely amazing. So different from the other parks as far as the lands, but the theming throughout was top notch.

There were so many cool areas of the park. Notice Ana and Else carved into the rocks on the right and Rapunzel carved into the rocks on the left (you can probably see her hair that looks like snakes more easily than her in this pic).

Keira had bought me a Nick Wilde shirt and tie for my birthday, so I went to the park dressed as him. But since I don’t get embarrassed by things like this, I also wore Liam’s Nick Wilke hat, to complete the outfit.

Officer Nick Wilde is always ready to lend a hand (or shoulder).

There were a number of rides that aren’t anywhere else - Tinker Belle, Rapunzel, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Peter Pan (a cool different version) and a few others. By the end of the day, our kids were really happy. Given our mastery of the system, we had ridden pretty much every ride that we wanted to ride, but Lily and I still wanted to go on some of the smaller rides so that we could do a thorough review of the park.

I can't resist anything pirate, given my affinity for Captain Morgan.

We had made a dinner reservation at restaurant as part of our vacation package, but when we got there, we realized that most of our kids wouldn’t eat anything on the menu, since everything had fish. So that meant that I also wouldn’t eat anything on the menu. In Japan, they don’t speak much English (which shouldn’t be surprising - I don’t speak Japanese, but after traveling the world and almost everyone speaking English, it was a bit of a shock). This made asking for adjustments to the orders nearly impossible, and I ended up eating off of the allergen menu, which was actually just the kids menu, and I ate the half that wasn’t seafood. Maureen cracked up in part because I was eating off of the kids menu, but in part because as part of the kids menu, they give you baby silverware, with my fork about half the size. And of course I was still wearing the Nick Wilde outfit.

By 7pm, the Livingston parents and Elenna and Keira were ready to go home, but everyone else was still ready to do more rides. We had made Liam sit around a few times while we went on thrill rides that he wouldn’t do, so we decided to do some rides for him (plus they were rides Lily and I needed to do for our rankings). As we discussed our ride criteria with the Livingston kids, they quickly got interested and helped us rate the additional rides. Our kids can be loud (which sticks out even in America, much less Japan), and when we were in line for a small kids roller coaster and Lily was excitedly (ie loudly) talking about what we rated some rides, a man came over to our group and I thought that we were going to be asked to quiet down. Instead, the guy asked if we were on Instagram and said that he travels around and rates theme parks around the world and wanted to see how we were rating things.

We closed down the park (9pm) and went home. For the second straight night, Liam was asleep within minutes of entering the room.

We usually close down the park.

The next morning we did it all over again - breakfast buffet at 6:30, rope drop the park and go on more rides. We only had a few more rides that we hadn’t gotten on, but were able to pretty much hit them all. We spent a lot of the morning doing little kids rides, which Liam loved, but the other people liked as well, since it brought us to other areas of the park that we wouldn’t have explored otherwise. And since the theming of the park is so good, everywhere we went, we were impressed, even if the ride we were on was somewhat boring.

There was an "underwater" Ariel themed area. Its hard to tell which of us is the real Prince Eric.

There were two problems with this day. First was that we were going to Kyoto, so we had to leave the hotel by 5pm to ensure we had enough time to grab some food and get on the train. The second problem was that it was supposed to rain all day.

The day started of with a general misting, which wasn’t that bad. We had bought some ponchos, but pretty much just used our normal rain coats. However, as the day goes on, the rain coats got soaked, and we moved over the ponchos. Meanwhile, Liam has a rain cover on his stroller, but it had developed a hole (not ideal for a rain cover), and we eventually were able to buy a new one.

That day I had 4 churros - three different flavors, since tater tots and churros are the key foods for me at Disney. At one point, Lily, Liam and I broke off from the group to get churros at a place that sold “Mickey churros”. I bought 6, and with the rain cover, its hard to tell if Liam is sleeping or awake, and I told Lily that he was awake, and she stuck a churro under the covering, and little hand came out of the dark and snatched it, as if it was a little animal in a cave. We ran to where we were meeting everyone, trying to keep the churros dry (I didn’t have a problem, since I ate my churros within seconds of getting it). At one point, Lily’s Mickey ears fell off, and I yelled to her to leave them and save the churros (and I was only 75% joking).

Elenna and I know all the tricks to Toy Story Mania.

Even though we were only there until 4pm, we did a lot (the rain scared away some people, but waits for some rides were still around 90 minutes). As we left Disney Sea, we decided that we loved the park, and although the results aren’t in (we won’t rate the US parks until we visit them again) we are pretty sure that it will be the best park by a landslide.

We ubered to the train station and got there about 90 minutes before the train was set to leave. We had read that you should pick up a bento box at the station and eat it on the train, so we tried to find a place that Megan had read about. The ony problem was that we couldn’t find it. We kept walking in circles as the map seemed to keep changing its location until we realized that it might be on a different floor, and we might have to go through the gates to the train to get to it. We found a place that may or may not have been the place we were looking for (often when you look for things on Google, they have the greek alphabet spelling of a place, but then there is no English sign on the restaurant, so it isn’t always clear if you are at the right place or not. We got bento boxes, but decided that Liam wouldn’t eat anything, so Megan went to a different place and got him some bread and strawberries. Then we bought some Pokemon cookies, just to make sure that we had enough to hold Liam over.

Pikachu was happy to show us to the train.

I was a bit afraid that the train would be a little bit elevated and we were going to have to climb up some stairs to get on the train because getting our bags up those stairs, through those tight spaces is always a problem. Luckily, these were more like subway platforms where you just rolled the bags on. We had bought the seats at the very back of the car, which came with extra luggage space, so we got evrerything on board without a problem.

We spent the first hour of the train eating from the bento boxes and then I started to write this blog. Megan fell asleep and I wasn’t paying too much attention, and then all of a sudden I realized that we were pulling into our station. I woke Megan up and there was a mad scramble to make sure that we had everything - after going to Disney our bags were not only extra full, but we had not packed as tightly and had things in overflow bags, so instead of 12 bags and stroller, we had 16 bags and a stroller, making getting off a bit more stressful. But we did it without leaving anything (at least anything that we have noticed by the time of this writing).

Our hotel was a 6 minute walk or a 6 minute cab ride, so we decided just to walk it. We probably looked a sight, the 10 of us walking with all of our bags. But we got there and checked in. We had debated what we were going to do the next morning, but decided that we all needed to sleep in.

The room had two queen beds side by side, and then a couple of tatami mats (Lily and Liam slept there). The girls quickly pointed out that the biggest problem was that there was only one bathroom. But we were all too tired to complain for too long.

DAY 231

I got up at 8:20 because I wanted to do some laundry and after doing laundry at the last place and it taking almost 2 hours to get it dry, I decided to give it some time. Lily wanted to send some of her stuff back to our house, so after I put in the laundry, I walked to a nearby post office to mail it. They were very worried about mailing things with batteries, and made me list out everything that I was mailing. The whole process took about 40 minutes, and while I was doing it, we had pushed back our departure time plans, which turned out well since even with that delay, I was still folding laundry (after the 1 hour I planned, I split up the laundry into two separate machines and did another 30 minutes).

I caught up to the group as they waited in line for breakfast. I had read that the french toast was to die for and it was. Megan and I were splitting pancakes and french toast, and I started on the french toast and when she saw how quickly I was eating, she told me to slow down. I told her that I couldn’t, because it was so good, and I wanted to eat my half while it was warm. I debated buying another french toast but didn’t want to slow everyone down.

After breakfast, we hopped on a train to go to a ramen making tour that I booked for us. First, they had us prepare some chicken for the noodles. Elenna was excited because after they cooked it, they gave us blow torches to finish the cooking.

Cooking with a blowtorch is always fun.

Then they had us make the dough, then put it into a machine to cut it into noodles.

We agreed that we need a noodle making machine at home.

After that, we made the broth. Then we cooked the noodles for about a minute, but it into the broth and added the chicken.

Ramen making was a lot of fun.

We got to make our broth and add any spices or garlic, etc to the bowl. The girls all took instagram pictures of their bowls, and then we dug in. Everyone at our table of 5 agreed that it was the best ramen that we have ever had. Then we asked the other table, and apparently they had been saying the same thing to each other.

If our other careers don't work out, then Mike and I have a future in ramen making.

After the class we hopped on a bus to go to visit a temple near a bamboo forest.

The forest was small, but neat.

I love that architecture so I had a great time walking around. The bamboo forest was a bit small (the more famous one was about 45 minutes away) but still neat to see how tall they grow.

Facing away from the forest.

After that we had some time to kill, so we went to a market that Maureen had read about and walked around. I was getting hungry again, so I bought a croquet with kobe beef, which was delicious. Then I saw that they were selling kobe beef on a stick and I had to try some (my favorite type of food, is food on a stick). It was quite possibly the best steak I had ever had.

The stalls in the market place were spot on.

Everyone’s feet were hurting, so Lily, Keira, Megan, Liam and I went to a cafe and sat down for a while, while Elenna and Rosie went to a McDonalds, and the other three kept walking around the market. The meeting spot for the tour was a cookie store, so we went there a few minutes before the start time and got some cookies.

This night time tour was a Geisha Tour, where we learned about the geisha culture and history. The picture for the tour had Geisha on it, so I thought one might be giving the tour, but it turned out to be a 35 year old Austrailan man. He moved to Japan 14 years ago and married a Japanese woman, and they both give tours.

A geisha walking down the street, after leaving a party.

We walked around to 3 of the 5 districts in Gion where there are geisha and learned about their training, how they leave their families at 15, the tea houses, etc. Apparently, you don’t always see a geisha on these tours, but we saw about half a dozen through the night, it was pretty neat. They had their faces painted white, and wore beaustiful kimonos.

A geisha leaving a party - they were usually surrounded by business men or security people.

The adults had wanted to go out to dinner and get some steak, but we were having a hard time finding a place that would take a reservation. At the end of the tour, we asked our tour guide for a recommendation who sent us to a place, while we put the kids into an Uber. They went to a 7 Eleven to get dinner, while we went to an amazing restaurant, where they brought out these great cuts of beef and we cooked them in these little grills built into the table.

The best information our tour guide gave us was the name of this place.

If I hadn’t already had that kobe beef on a stick, I might have said that that steak was the best I had ever had.

Easily, the best steak I've had was in Japan.

DAY 232

We slept in again the next day, but I got up again earlier than everyone else because Megan had wanted a yakuta (a kimono type gown) that they sold at the hotel as a mothers day present. So I bought it and went to the post office again to send it home (since we can’t carry any more stuff). Once again, it was a 40 minute process. I like to collect coins, so I tried to send some coins back with the package, but they wouldn’t let me do it without buying insurance, and the post office I was at didn’t sell insurance, so I had to keep lugging the coins around.

We packed up our luggage and then left it at the hotel as we went out to the same place again to have brunch - this time I ordered two french toasts, because now I knew better. Then we took a train to Fushimi Inari Taisha - a place where there were a bunch of gates going up a mountain.

We got to see the tori gates.

Along the way there were a number of shrines (and cafes and souvenier shops) to explore.

There were a number of shrines to explore along the way.

It was a lot of steps, and my knee was starting to bother me, but we made it to the top. Liam was able to do it mostly on his own, although it was periodically carried by Rosie and Anthony for short periods of time to get a rest.

The repeating gates created a cool line of sight.

After that we went back to the hotel to get our bags and then Ubered to our next hotel, which had an onsen. An onsen is a hot spring bath. We had done something similar in New Zealand, but here at the onsen, you have to go in naked (there is a men’s one and a separate women’s one). Our daughters had been dreading this stop ever since they learned about it 10 months ago.

We separated, and by the time I got Liam ready and down to the onsen, Mike and Anthony were already there in the sauna.

Liam was ready for the onsen.

Liam was a little put off about being naked for a minute or two, but was soon running around naked without a care. There were three baths - an indoor pool (which we didn’t use) and then an outdoor pool (where we spent most of our time) and then an indoor cold plunge pool. Liam and Anthony went to cold pool and did the “ice bucket challenge” pouring water on each other. That loosened up Liam a bit, and git home from being boored to really enjoying it. Overall, it was very relaxing and just what the doctor ordered after going up so many steps on our walk through the gates.

Apparently, the girls loved the onsen. I knew that Megan would (she had been lamenting that the hotel at Thomasland had one, but she couldn’t use it because she wasn’t feeling great). But Keira and Lily were especially effusive about it, and how relaxing it was.

After the bath, we went to dinner in our kimonos and ate at the restuarant in a preset menu, in a private room.

We wore the kimonos the rest of the day.

It was probably for the best for everyone else in the restaurant that we got a private room, since we were a bit noisy and Liam often got up and walked around the room. I don’t eat fish, so I’m not a great judge of the quality of the food, but they brought out about 15-20 small dishes of things - fish, shrimp, pickled vegetables, soup, duck and steak. I tried a bit of everything, but didn’t like much beyond the steak. Liam is also not a great judge of food, and halfway through the dinner I went back to the room and brought down the makings of peanut butter sandwiches and that is what he ate.

After dinner, Megan and Rosie went back to the onsen for a little while, while the rest of us went to bed.

The next day we got up and had breakfast in that same room.

Liam wasn't quite ready to get up for breakfast.

It was a “traditional Japanese breakfast” which was largely fish based, so I ate some rice and a little bit of soup. After breakfast, we went back to the onsen again. Since the onsens are separated by gender, they alternate who goes to which one each day, so we got to see the other onsen. It was largely the same, with a slightly larger outside pool, and a smaller cold water pool. I tried to get Liam to use the sauna, but he peeked his head into the door and declared it too hot.

Then we went back to the room to pack. It was our last day with the Livingstons, as they headed back to Tokyo for a day before heading home and we were on our way to Osaka. We were really going to miss them, they were great traveling companions for the adults, the teens and Liam (he got spoiled and I’m sure he is going to want to be carried around more that we are willing to).

We booked a car service to take us to Osaka (1.5 hours away) because we didn’t want to deal with taking the bags to a train station, then on a 1.5 hour train and then figuring out how to get to the hotel. I’m generally a “path of least resistance” type of planner, and I’m fortunate enough that the higher priced car option isn’t a make or break for me. The longer we go on this trip, the more worn down I am, and the more likely I am to just order a car. I’m a bit torn between the goal of showing my kids how easy it is to take public transportation in other countries and the desire to have a relaxing trip.

We got to Osaka with some time to kill, so we walked to a cafe and ordered some scones and cookies. Liam and I each ordered a grilled cheese that was excellent, so Liam ordered another one. After that we walked over to a mall to visit the Pokemon Cafe and store.

Liam got to meet some legendary Pokemon.

Megan had made reservations in advance, using a third party because they were so hard to find. Apparently the cafe doesn’t like that, so you have to pretend that you made it yourself, and if they find out you used a service, then they won’t take your reservation. There was a bit of a tense moment when they asked to see the email confirmation, but we got in.

It was a cute little cafe with Pokemon all over.

There were Pokemon things all over the cafe.

The food was all Pokemon shaped and the pancakes were good, but the rest of the food and drinks were just ok. Elenna and Liam got some merch, so they were happy.

As is often the case at themed restaurants, the food looks better than it tastes.

We went back to the room and surprised them because their room was Pokemon themed. This is another thing that Megan did way in advance and had to hunt the rooms. There was a period of time where it wasn’t clear if the hotel chain was going to be able to renew the license with Pokemon, but ultimately that got settled and we got a room.

Who better to go to sleep with than Snorlax?

We had about an hour to get ready before our photo shoot. It looked like the timing would work perfectly to get some laundry done - I could put a load in the wash, then put it in the dryer for 1.3 hours (the dryers here have been very weak) which would give us time to do the shoot and get back. Unfortunately, there were some delays in getting all the clothes, so the 2nd and 3rd machines got in a few minutes later, and all the machines took a few minutes longer to wash than they said they would. So I didn’t finish putting the clothes in the dryer until 6:58 for our 7pm photo shoot that was 10 minutes away. I had the rest of them go ahead and I caught up, but didn’t get there until about 7:07, which created some stress for everyone, since the photographer didn’t want to start without me, but when I finally walked up, it seemed that he had started to take some pics. But the area that the photographer chose was great, very vibrant.

The area where we had the photo shoot was pretty neat.

Liam was either getting very tired, or pretending he was, so he asked to be carried alot. He did seem to be sleepy, so I spent most of the time holding him and cajoling him to be happy and awake. I eventually bribed him with candy to be good and he was. The one problem with the photo shoot was we thought it was going to be cold (it was cool and a little windy in the afternoon), so we thought we would just be wearing our jackets the whole night, but the night turned beautiful. I, for one, was not dressed up much because I figured that my shirt didn’t matter if it was under a jacket, so we will see how these pictures turn out.

Liam posed in front of the famous sign.

Lily had left some clothes at our last hotel, so she and Megan went shopping to replace them, while the rest of us went home. We stopped to get some food for breakfast for the next day, and then went back to the hotel. I finished the laundry and then got Liam ready for bed.

Day 234

We got up early because we were off on a trip to Hiroshima. Hiroshima was 1.5 hours away by bullet train, so this was going to be a long day. I told the kids 8am to 8pm, but I hadn’t factored in getting to the train station, so we left the hotel at 7:30. I’m always a bit nervous when I book something that it might go sideways and I would get blamed, and this tour had me nervous because after booking it, the confirmation didn’t say it included the train tickets (even though the tour was titled “Hiroshima tour from Osaka with bullet train”), but I followed up with them and they said they would send the tickets the day before. By noon the day before we still hadn’t gotten the tickets and I reached out again, and eventually got them that night. You can cancel the tour without a penalty up to the day before, so it kind of makes sense that they wouldn’t buy the tickets until the last minute, but it still gave me a high dose of stress.

We had about 20 minutes from our scheduled arrival in Hiroshima to meet the tour guide, so I was a bit worried about train delays and such, but Megan pointed out how efficient and on time the Japanese railway system has been since we got there and I felt a bit more relaxed. We found the tour location and it turns out that we were on a bilingual tour with about 30 people. So our guide would say everything in Spanish and in English. I said to my kids that this was actually better than Duolingo for learning the language.

Just going through the city, you wouldn’t realize that it had been leveled 75 years ago. It looked like pretty much any other city in Japan at this point. I had done a quick google search before going to see if there was any health risk of visiting, but it had been cleaned up a long time ago.

The first stop was Miyajima, an island that was famous for its floating torii gate. We took a ferry there and the island itself was cool - there was a forested mountatin that the guide said you could climb, but if you did, you wouldn’t have time to eat lunch or see the gate, so we skipped that. But we walked through a little town area filled with restaurants and shops that was pretty neat on our way to the gate, and we vowed to go back and explore more after we saw the gate.

The town was full of restaurants and shops, which had some good food.

There was a pretty shrine and temple on the water with a view of the gate.

The shrine was only partly floating when we got there.

It had a place where you could get your fortune told, which we skipped because we already did that twice (Liam has twice had a very good fortune). Then there was a pier out into the water to get a better view of the shrine.

Liam put in a prayer at the shrine.

The tide was low, so it wasn’t really floating when we were there, but it did give us the opportunity to go out and see it up close. Our girls declined to go out there, because there were some puddles on the ground.

We got up close and personal with the shrine after the tide went out.

On the way back we stopped at the restaurant that the guide pointed out for lunch. We were a little worried about getting seating, since it only seated about 20 people (and our tour was 30, much less everyone else who was there) but we got a table relatively quickly. We also got a few snacky things at some of the stands as we walked down the street. Our guide kept talking about how Miyajima was famous for their “yellow limes” which sounded cool, but as we looked at signs for them, it seemed to just be lemon flavored things, and a quick google search didn’t show yellow limes as a thing.

It was a neat little area and definitely worth the stop.

We ferried back to the city and then drove over to Peace Memorial Park. The park was located about 800 meters from the site where the bomb exploded and was built to be a symbol of peace and protest against nuclear bombs. There was a fire that burned in the middle of a water feature, and was set to keep burning until all atomic weapons were destroyed. There were also a couple of bells that you could ring, and doing so was a protest against nuclear weapons.

Ringing the bell was a protest against nuclear weapons.

There was also a monument to a little girl who was 2 when the bomb dropped and she survived, but 10 years later developed Leukemia and died. Before she died, she had heard that if you made 1,000 paper cranes, then your wish would be granted, so she started making them while in the hospital. Today, school children send paper cranes to the monument, and there were some pretty designs.

Each of these was make by a series of small paper cranes.

Our Tour guide took us around the park and showed us where the hypocenter of the blast was (I thought initially that our guide, who was bilingual was saying the wrong word for epicenter, but it turns out hypocenter is a word). He also showed us the ruins of a building that was preserved to show the impact of the bomb.

Then we went into the museum, and it was excellent. It showed the horrors of the blast - how destructive it was with before and after photos. Although about 70k people died on impact, another 100k died in the next year from injuries and radiation poisoning. There were stories of survivors seeing the fireball in the sky, then the radioactive rain that fell about 30 minutes later. Heart breaking stories of family destroyed, spearated during the confusion from the blast, or the long-term effects of the radiation. We only had about an hour in the museum which we all agreed was too little.

We went back to the train station and bought some food to take on the train back. Similar to the trip down, the tour company didn’t send the train tickets until we were about half way done with the tour, so I had some unnecessary heart palpitations while we were on the tour, but we got the tickets and everything worked out fine. We had heard that Japan had some bento boxes with self heating capabilities - so that you could have a warm meal on the train - but every time we looked, the places didn’t sell them or they were sold out.

As we waited for our train, Liam would sit on my feet. Somewhere on this trip, this started - likely in response to Megan telling him that he can't sit on the dirty the floor, so he started sitting on my feet. He did this anywhere he was tired - train stations, subway cars, Disney lines, etc.

Liam technically wasn't sitting on the dirty floor.

We got home around 9:15, so it was closer to 14 hours than 12, and we were all ready for bed.

Day 235

The next day Megan wanted to sleep in until she woke up, but I set my alarm for 11:30am because I had bought tickets for Liam, Elenna, Keira and I to see Minecraft the Movie. It was about as good as a movie about Minecraft could be. Like most theaters, the movie had commercials for a few minutes, then coming attractions. After the Hiroshima tour (and a few other things that I had organized that weren’t as well planned as the things that Megan planned), Keira bet me $5 that this movie was going to be in Japanese (it wasn’t).

After the movie, we picked up Megan and went to the Expo 2025, which was being held in Osaka. The Expo is kind of like a Worlds Fair, and since we were there, we figured that we would check it out. Liam was on board once he heard that there were Pokemon there.

I had bought the tickets the night before through a third party website, but didn’t realize that I also had to create an Expo account and link it to the tickets, until the Uber was pulling up to the Expo and I was trying to open the tickets. Straightening it out took about 20 minutes, since I couldn’t get the app to work and then had to go to the ticket office to get it fixed (to my credit, they couldn’t get my phone to work either and had to print out the tickets on paper). The biggest problem with this was that it was raining, and everyone was standing in an alcove while I got this done.

Liam was on board as long as Pokemon were there.

We walked into the Expo and didn’t have much of a plan. I wanted to see what it all looked like, and I had read that you needed tickets to get into some things but not others. I didn’t realize that since I bought the tickets I was also supposed to have a more detailed plan than walk around and look at things, so we stopped and tried to figure out where to go.

I would have been happy to walk around and just look at things like this.

We went into the Singapore exhibit since we liked Singapore and it was near where we were when we stopped. It was filled with paper cut outs of plants and animals and had a section where you wrote down a wish and it was added to the exhibit (our wish was for Peace, Love and Special Pokemon).

But I guess it was cool to have a plan and see things too.

The girls wanted to see what the US pavilion was like, so we walked over there, but it took a while since it was confusing. Luckily by then it stopped raining. The exhibit had entrance times, we we had to wait 30 minutes to see it, and it was a 30 minute exhibit, and since we were going out to dinner, this meant that it was the last exhibit we would see, but the kids were ok with that.

We thought that the exhibit was ridiculous because the theme was working together collaboratively with other countries, which the recent tariff fiasco made seem like a farce. It also highlighted work visa programs and immigration programs, which have largely since been eliminated. It was a high tech exhibit and had some neat space footage, but we all felt like we enjoyed Singapore more and probably should have visited other countries instead.

We were very excited to see how much the US wants to work with foreign countries.

On the way out, we saw a beautiful sunset.

It could have gone more smoothly, but we were all glad we did it.

We got home and quickly changed into dry clothes. We picked up lily and left Keira and Liam, since we were going to a steak restaurant - Lily had been asking for steak ever since we talked about how good the dinner with Mike and Maureen was. I found a place and we went over. I was a little bit worried when I saw that the place had a statue of Spiderman outside.

I guess Spiderman wouldn't lend his likeness if the steak wasn't good.

But we went in and the food was quite good, although I enjoyed it less than everyone else because I knew how expensive it was. Then we went home and Lily and Megan had a call with her guidance counselor about classes for next year. While this was going on, I called Disney Paris because we couldn’t find our reservations anywhere and we were supposed to be there in 48 hours. It turns out the reservations were canceled because they were linked to an email address that Megan no longer had access to, and the payment was tied to a card that was compromised and turned off, so without the payment, the reservation was canceled.

I tried to get a reservation at the same place, but they didn’t have the same room set up available. Lily lobbied for us to go to the most expensive place (of course), and I ended up doing that because it was closest. Later Lily admitted that she has expensive tastes, but at least she committed to finding a career that would support them.