Posted by Jess
19 October 2010

What visit with Kiki would be complete without a trip to the zoo?  We headed to Yokohama on Saturday - a city just south of Tokyo - to go to Zoorasia.  It's about an hour trip on the Yamanote Rail Line, which is just like a subway line but goes further distances and runs above the ground rather than below it.  It'd be like living in Hudson and taking a train into Minneapolis every day for work - this would be the train you'd take.  But if you lived in Lake Calhoun and needed to go downtown for work, you'd just take the subway.  Hopefully that helps you distinguish between the two a little.  After getting off the train at Nagatsuta Station, we took the city bus to the zoo entrance.  Along the way we saw a lot of American restaurants - Mister Donut, McD's, KFC, Denny's and a Big Boy! 


Saturday was a rainy day which was good because that meant the zoo wasn't busy.  But it also meant that a picnic lunch was a bit more difficult and by the afternoon we started to get a little bit chilled!  We got to the zoo around 11am and started off.  The animals were pretty active since it was cool, cloudy and rainy so we got to see almost everyone, even some animals we've never seen before, like a Japanese Badger! The zoo had a penguin exhibit with a very curious penguin, which the girls found funny.  It would float in the water and follow you around or if you put your hand on the glass and waved it around, it would follow your hand.  Ella had fun with that for a long time.  We found a bench to eat lunch in front of the seal exhibit so we got lunch and a show under cover from the rain! 




After our time in the zoo we stopped off at the gift shop and the ice cream shop before getting back on the bus and train.  When we got back to Tokyo and off the subway, it had started pouring!  Abby had a cover over her stroller, but Ella, Kiki and I got soaked!!  We ducked into the grocery store and grabbed some take-out for dinner and ran home.  While I got dinner set up, Kiki gave the girls a bath and got them into warm, dry clothes.  We were all pretty exhausted after dinner so everyone headed to bed early!  And that was Saturday.



Kanpai!
Jess

Posted by Jess
18 October 2010

Kiki-fest 2010 ended today.  It's been a whirlwind tour of Japan for 10 days straight and we're exhausted!  But so happy to have had the visit and the girls' adored their time having fun with Auntie Kiki.  Tonight we're heading to bed a little early but I need to get Kiki-fest blogged so I'm going to try to do a post every night this week.

We've blogged about last Friday already with the Fish Market, Temple and Karaoke, but we also had one stop in between - the Tokyo Tower.

Tokyo Tower is a structure near the Roppongi neighborhood and its modeled after the Eiffel Tower (but better, as the Japanese tell it!).  You can go up to the sky decks - there are two levels - and take in the views of Tokyo.  On a clear day, you can see to Mt. Fuji.  We bought the extra ticket to go up to the second level, even though Kiki is afraid of heights!  It was a fun view, but not clear enough to see Fuji-san, unfortunately.   First stop was 150m up, second stop was at 250m up (about 820 feet in the air). 

Somehow we don't have any pictures of the tower itself so I have grabbed one from another site - gojapan.com.


Here are some of our own pictures of the view.













On the way down to the ground to leave, Kiki got to witness how the Japanese love Abigail (like the Germans love David Hasselhoff)  The stroller is facing into the elevator and as we're riding down a guy (with his friends) about my age says hi to Abby and then snaps her picture.  The first of many pictures that would be taken during Kiki-fest of my kids.  This guys picture would have looked a little like the one above. 

We took a taxi to Tokyo Tower and home again as it's not all that easy to get there by subway.  We don't live too far from Roppongi, but there isn't a great direct route, so we take a taxi - it's just easier than changing trains 3 times with the stroller.  While we were in the taxi and up at the tower, Kiki encouraged the little photographer in Ella.  So here's what the back of a taxi looks like to Ella and what Ella viewed at Tokyo Tower.








Since Kiki comes well equipped with camera equipment, expect the blog to be more colorful for these posts! 

Kanpai!
Jess

Posted by Jess
8 October 2010

Kiki-fest 2010 officially began last night and this morning we headed to a popular tourist destination - the Tsukiji Fish Market.  We dropped Ella off at school and headed on the train to the market, which consists of an outer market and an inner market.  Tsukiji Market is the world's largest seafood market and the tuna auction where up to 600lb tuna are sold to local restaurant owners in the mornings.  Because the market is a working wholesale market and tourists tend to disrupt work there, the tuna auction takes place as the boats arrive in the morning - around 5am.  The auction is limited to 140 visitors and again, its at 5am, so we didn't go for that - I think you have to be in line by 4:30 or so to be in the group let in and that seems a bit extreme to see big fish on the floor with people shouting in Japanese.  We did go to the outer market and got there around 9:30.

The outer market is more for individual buyers than restaurant owners, with small stalls selling lots of different types of fish, some fruit and vegetables, some pottery, and lots of noodle stands and sushi shops.  We wandered a little bit up and down the streets and tried to take a few pictures, but its hard to do because the rows are small and there are a lot of people.  We tried to stay out of the way as much as possible and Jay stayed home with Abby since kids are politely requested to stay at home.  We did see a group of American tourists that were holding things up and taking pictures with them.  We tried to not be so American as everything I read says "do not be a nuisance in the market".  I felt a little badly because I moved Kelly along probably a little faster than she wanted to!  We did try a small sample from one of the stands - it had peanuts and snacks.  Kelly tried some dried broad beans and we both tried the broad beans with brown sugar.  They also had peanuts with sugar and peanuts with wasabi out to sample.  Here's a pic of broad beans (but no pod for ours and they were dried like potato chips):



Most things we saw at the outer market are things that we can find at the local grocery store.  We didn't go into the inner market, which is where the wholesale market all takes place.  To be honest, I don't even know where it is and tourists are not so welcome there.  Maybe we'll check it out next time.  The market starts to close up around 11am or so, but we left by 10.

Octopus anyone?

On our way from the station to the market, we passed by a cool looking building.  Thanks to the wonders of the iPhone, we figured out that it is a famous Buddhist temple and decided to stop in for a look.  The temple was the Tsukiji Hongan-ji temple.  This version of the temple was built in the 1930's, but the original was built in 1617, then burned down, rebuilt and then taken down again by the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923.   While the main hall (Hondo) seating area was not fancy, the altar in this shrine was really ornate, with beautiful gold - the pictures don't do the beauty of the place justice.  They have daily service there twice a day (we weren't there for service) and an area with incense in the front where you could make a small donation, add some incense and then say a prayer (similar to lighting a candle in a catholic church).




And that was Friday morning.  More to come from Kiki-fest 2010.  Stay tuned for some thoughts on the Japanese karaoke experience.

Kanpai!
Jess