New Friends
Yesterday was a whirlwind of fun and activity. Tim set off a little early to visit a glider school north of Tokyo. When he sent pictures later in the day, I started to worry that we’d never see him again. Grass airstrip, taildragger airplanes, gliders. And all of it next to a fly-fishing river? I really can’t imagine a more appealing combination!
Meanwhile, the kids and I had a slow morning at the hotel before we meandered over to our meet-up spot for the World Schooling Pop Up families. The host family found a park with a series of nearly 30 obstacles. The kids climbed and scaled and tugged and rowed from one end of the park to the other. Duke found another boy who speaks all things Zelda and Minecraft and they become fast friends. By the end of the afternoon, Amelia had fallen in with a group of girls as if they had known each other for years.
After the park we visited the Nori Museum, played on another park, and started heading toward Shibuya. Our host heard that Duke loves nori and pointed out a few specialty shops along the way. Since I was in a bit of a rush and don’t read Japanese, it was a random grab… We’ll see how they turn out.
After that we set out to meet up with Tim in Shibuya. That was… an interesting experience. Tim’s battery was draining… 7%… 5%… 2%…. We had set a meeting point, but the area was jam packed with people, construction was blocking some of the access to it and police were out controlling the crowd and actively shutting down other access points. My gps kept jumping around, the crowds were tugging the kids, and we kept having to fight crowds to go somewhere only to find the way blocked. Eventually the Poulsen’s found him, and then finally we detoured through a shopping mall to find everyone. Phew!
After that it was a delicious dinner and subway home to collapse into bed. Today we’ve got another full day of adventure with the group.
More soon!
Wow, what a life! I am hooked! Please keep writing!
Thanks, Anna! I’ll do my best!
What a day! I love the descriptions we get from your blog. They make it so vivid! Guess kids will always love climbing and playing no matter where they are! Keep having fun!!
Thank you!
Thankfully, Tokyo seems to be full of places for kids to play and climb!
Can you adopt me? Your kids are blessed by you and Tim and you both are blessed with the two of them. Love you all lots.
Thanks, Rhonda! We feel incredibly lucky!
That’s an incredible looking park! How fun! What a scary experience in Shibuya with your battery dying and not being able to meet up with Tim so easily. I hear that Shibuya fashion sense is WEIRD!
On my first trip to Japan, I encountered miso soup chock full of tiny clams like the ones it looks like you were having. I loved that soup so much! I also encountered tiny baby fish all in my rice and did NOT love that. They looked like rice except a little bigger, greyer and with eyes!
That park was absolutely amazing. Apparently there are at least six of them around Tokyo, and the one we went to wasn’t even one of the biggest!
It always astounds me that we can wander into a food court in a shopping mall and encounter such delicious food. We always find good restaurants near train stations too.
I had the same assessment about food in food courts from my experiences in Japan. Best okonomiyaki I ever ate was from a food cart in a food court in the basement of a shopping center in my favorite town called Kanazawa which is a tourist town centered on a castle and has a lot of tea ceremony stuff.
I can’t imagine such wonderful parks all over Tokyo since I only saw the downtown area of Tokyo which was the equivalent of Times Square NYC but so much more full of lights and screens even since our uncle kazuo (Chiho’s dad) told us we needed to experience Tokyo at rush hour. That was something else. The subways had hired staff to help gently “push” people on to the trains. It was like being in a gentle wave of motion that deposited you up and onto the train somehow. Nothing rude or scary. It was done inconceivably well. We were with Chiho and Manami and started giggling with them on the train and got shushed by a punk of all things. That only made us pause in shock for a moment and then burst into more giggles that we genuinely could not contain over the ridiculousness of being shushed by a grumpy teenage guy. But being older and understanding Japanese culture a little bit more now, we were indeed rude for making any sound! We had no idea it was taboo. Our cousins were giggling as much as we were which was nice of them!
Is it still the case that they only take cash on trains for the food? That shocked me. Just when you think they are so modern, they won’t take any credit cards on trains or at ryokans. I mean, who carries enough cash to pay for a hotel stay?