28 August 2010
Posted by Jay

Saturday night was the first night Jess and I went out on the town without the kids.  We found a sitter through our church who was quite reasonable by Tokyo standards.  There are numerous sitter services within the city, but the costs for them are astronomical.

One of Jess's co-workers suggested a yakitori place that they really enjoyed going to.  He even made a reservation for us and drew us a map to get there!

We left the girls with the sitter and headed out to dinner.  We found it without much issue and found that he reserved a table in their traditional dining area.  We removed our shoes when we walked in the door and sat on the tatami mats at the low tables.  Before we go on, we are really not meant to sit on the floor.  The endless battle was finding a comfortable way to sit during our meal, but this was the only negative of the evening.

So what is yakitori?  It is a style of cooking using skewers over charcoal.  We were given a "must try" list by Jess's co-workers and they did not steer us wrong.  They had a english menu which layed out the different meats and veggies that you could get and also side dishes.

We started out with a couple glasses of Kirin beer and cucumber with japanese miso.  So the must haves were as follows:
chicken meatball
cheese, pepper and bacon-my favorite
tomato bacon
Shitake
Garlic chicken
Hokkaido potato-an awesome baked potato
We also got the bacon-wrapped asparagus-Jess's favorite.

Everything was amazing, and we would definitely go back.

After dinner we took a cab to the Ginza neighborhood.  This is one of the popular upscale shopping districts in Tokyo.  Luckily all the stores were closed due to the hour (well lucky for me)!

charcoal grilled yakitori kushiwaka, dinner on the third floor

Don't let the smile fool you, my feet were totally asleep

Jess showing off the bacon wrapped asparagus and her mad chopstick skillz

Ginza

Ginza

Yamaha store on Ginza

Kanpai!

Jay

30 August 2010
Posted by Ella

It was my first day of my new school at church today.  Miss Jennifer and Miss Kana are really nice.  We played with cars and dress up and outside with sand and water.  Daddy made me lunch in my flower lunch box with carrots and crackers for snack and PB and J for lunch! There was even a surprise dessert, Oreos!  Daddy took some pictures of me before I went to school, and Miss Jennifer took lots of pictures too.  I am excited for tomorrow to come so I can go back!

Ella

Look my backpack!

Big smile!

Another free picture slideshow by Smilebox

28-August 2010
Posted by Jay

Saturday morning we decided to head to the Shinagawa Aquarium.  It was a fun little aquarium that had a lot of local aquatic species and some from around the world. It also had a really cool tunnel water tank where it was like you are walking on the sea floor with the fish swimming above you.  There were huge rays, some sea turtles and lots of cool fish in there. There was also Shark Hall that was a tank with sand tiger sharks and grey reef sharks.

Along with the fish they had dolphins, sea lions, seals and some penguins.  We went to the sea lion show which had a sea lion that did a traditional Japanese dance (we think), but sadly we didn't think to videotape it until the very end.

We had a nice picnic lunch in the pavilion area outside the aquarium. After lunch we went to the dolphin show.  Before the dolphin show there was a huge ceremony for a family, we have no idea what is was about, but neat to see. There were a ton of people in the dolphin stadium and a camera crew.

At the end of our time at the aquarium we went to the underwater viewing area for the seals.  It was similar to the other tunnel where the seals swam all around you.  Abby and Ella were having fun following the seals as they swam all over.

Overall we had a really fun time at the aquarium, Abby loved the dolphin show the best.

At the aquarium!

On the sidewalk telling us how to get to the aquarium

Pond area outside

The aquarium stadium

Cafe outside of aquarium

Ray from below

Sea turtle

Big fish

Mushroom jellyfish, well named

Cast of Finding Nemo

How much electricity does an eel produce?

Sea Lion

Pictures do not do the size of this guy justice

Yup, that is a fan on his head

Bye Bye!

He shoots and scores!

Ella a little hot at lunch

Abby enjoying some sandwich

Some ceremony thing

Re-hydrating

Nice shot by Jess

Ella and Abby watching the seals

Kanpai!

Jay

Posted by Jess
26 August 2010

Not much to report for Thursday and Friday this past week so we took some pictures of the upstairs of our apartment to keep the tour going.

Our apartment is a 3 bedroom loft.  The girls' bedrooms are on the first floor with the kitchen, a bathroom and living room as you've seen some of already.  There is an open staircase to the second floor which is where the master bedroom and bath are.  Here's the tour.

As you get to the top of the stairs, there is a landing that is all shelves and closet space.

If you turn left, there's just two things - a door out to a shared balcony with a view towards downtown and then a storage closet.  The closet was just an open area but we needed more space to hang things, so we bought tension shower rods at a home-goods store and are using them as closet rods for Jason's dress clothes and some jackets. 
If you turn right at the top of the stairs, you go into our bedroom, which has 3 components - the bed/closet area, a sitting/tv area and the bathroom.  The bed area is first as you walk into the room - it's a king size bed and then we have two tall armoirs that are our closets. 
Next is the sitting and tv area - there's a couch and large tv that sit on a dresser with a bunch of drawers.  This is where our blu-ray player and Wii are hooked up.  To the right of the couch is a patio door opening to the balcony which faces the shopping area (the opposite direction of the balcony mentioned above. 

Ok I was watching an episode of Glee, I admit it!

we have the ironing board set up in front of the patio doors right now - its the least likely place for the kids to get hit by an iron and its too hot to sit outside anyway!

To the left of the the TV and couch is the door into the bathroom.  The bathroom is great - and full of buttons that I'll show you in a bit!  We have a vanity, toilet, and then a walk-in shower and tub area.

This is the only tub in the house so we pretty much just use this bathroom for all of us!

This panel does a few things - the gray button calls the front desk for help if you need it, the yellow button turns on the heat to the shower, the pink button fills the tub automatically (and then stops the water when the tub is full) and the blue button reheats the water in the tub if you've let it sit too long.  The gray arrow buttons on the right side are to change the temperature of the water for the tub and shower and the digital display on the left shows you what temperature you have everything set to.  Fun stuff, but right at Abby's height while she's in the tub so the alarm button makes me a little nervous!

Sorry its out of focus!  This panel is on the wall as you enter the shower/tub area.  The bottom buttons are for running a dryer, cool breeze, heater and ventilator in the shower room.  The top buttons and numbers across are to set a timer for all of those things.  Supposed to work well drying clothes too by hanging them in the shower but we haven't tried it yet. 

Ok, the third and final panel of bathroom buttons is attached to the toilet.  I hope you're ready for this.
The toilet has a built in bidet, seat warmer and dryer.  So you can push the button while you're using the toilet and water sprays up at you to help you out if you need it.  There's one button for girls and one for boys.  Then there's the drying button which blows warm air on your private parts for after you use the bidet.  And you can turn on the seat warmer if you want.  I've been told though that the seat warmer does not shut itself off automatically though and can give you burns if you're not careful!

That's the upstairs tour.  This place also comes with a lot of instruction manuals which is good because we certainly can't read what's printed on the buttons!

Next tour will include the kitchen and living room and we'll try to get some pictures of the views from our balconies, but we only think of it at night and it's pitch black by 7pm so it's hard to get outside pictures.

Kanpai!
Jess

Posted by Jess
25 August 2010

Tonight we had dinner with my boss from my last job in Minneapolis.  He's in meetings in our offices this week and was so kind to take us (all 4 of us!) out.  He lived here for 6 years with Medtronic so he's definitely a good resource for all things Tokyo.  He took us to a place not far from our house where we had some salad appetizers - cabbage and cucumbers (pretty common here I've found) and then we had some steamed and fried chicken and vegetable dumplings.  The place was great and really reasonably priced - definitely somewhere we could go back to.  It's called Harajuku Gyoza Rou.  I didn't take pictures of our food but I took some from another website (sorry they are small and a little fuzzy!).

we sat at some booths to the right of the counter area

steamed dumplings

fried dumplings

cucumber salad appetizer

cabbage appetizer

Abby loved the cabbage, cucumbers and dumplings.  Ella, however, only ate Abby's puffs and wouldn't try anything we ordered.  She's just not in to new foods right now, but we're hoping she'll warm up to it soon.  She's fine when the other kids are eating new things but of course when Mom and Dad tell her to try something there's no way!  I have a feeling I'll be singing that song for 14 more years at least :)

After dinner we went in search of ice cream.  I thought I knew of a place that was close by and was completely wrong.  Which is strange because I usually have a really great memory for that sort of thing and I can see the place in my head - it just wasn't on the corner I thought it was.  It's going to bug me now until I figure out where that was. 

So we started walking back to our place and ended up getting ice cream at McDonald's.  After treats we parted ways with our host.  So great to try something a bit more Asian and to have a wonderful host. 

And I just did some blog searching for the ice cream place...here it is:

Jonathan's on the right hand side of this photo - across the intersection - I think I may have been 1 intersection short         thank you to http://japan.fjordaan.net for helping me find it!

And now I can get some sleep tonight.  thank goodness!

Kanpai!
Jess