On our own in Tokyo

Grant is working this week in the Tokyo Amazon office, so Ren and I are on our own. It’s amazing how few photos I can take when wrangling a toddler around a city by myself! Not a single one yesterday, in fact.

We walked Grant part of the way to his office, and stopped off at a playground on the way. It was pretty simple, two regular swings, monkey bars, a slide, and a bouncy riding thing…and a zip line that was basically just a rope hanging down with a knot in it. I thought it looked pretty cool, but most of it was a little too old for Ren so I’m not sure we’ll head back there. Instead, we left when it started raining on us and went to do Ren’s second favorite thing: watch the trains. When that got old, we moved forward to most favorite thing: ride the trains! 

We got on the JR Yamanote line, which does a circular loop through the city, and rode to Shinjuku. Lots of skyscrapers, department stores and a super busy train station. We wandered the streets, and ducked down a tiny alley with fake cherry blossoms overhead. It was an interesting juxtaposition to the busy broader streets, and home to dozens of tiny restaurants with just a few counter seats. Turns out, this area is Omoide Yokocho (literal translation is Memory Lane, colloquially known as Piss Alley). Looked like a fun pre-baby excursion, but probably not in the cards on this trip.

We did a little shopping in the area, and headed back to the hotel where we napped and took it easy. Dinner was bento boxes in the room from the nearby department store food hall, and a late evening return from Grant just in time to tuck Ren in.

Today we woke up to quite the surprise: a view of Mount Fuji from our hotel window! Also, an amazing blue sky and sunshine, a first on this trip. Fuji-san likes to play peekaboo almost as much as Ren, and was hiding in clouds just a few minutes later.

Ren and I set off in the sunshine to ride the subway to the other side of town, our goal being the SkyTree and the aquarium at its base. It’s the world’s tallest free-standing broadcasting tower, and it really was impressive. 

Ren found the dismantling of a temporary ice rink at the base much more interesting and we passed the long ticket lines and followed the other moms and kids to the aquarium. It was a really nice place, sparkling clean and plenty of exhibits at toddler eye level. 

We watched the jellyfish for a while, and then discovered a workshop next to the penguins where for ¥500 (about $5), you could buy a plain white T-shirt, and decorate it with penguin and heart stamps. Right up Ren’s alley, both in subject matter and activity, and it made a great hands on souvenir for us. The penguins were fun to watch, but even better was the diver cleaning up penguin poop. 

 Wrapped up this evening by getting together with Adam, an old friend of Grant’s from Concord who we will be traveling to Kyoto with this weekend! We’re already looking forward to our time with Uncle Adam.