Day trip to Osaka. Kyoto isn’t too far from Osaka, but since we’ve been using JR rail passes on the trip, we figure we might as well take the high-speed bullet train. We find our seats on the train, get everyone settled, distribute snacks, and pull out books to read, when a train conductor comes by to check our tickets. “About what time will we arrive in Osaka?”, Jan asks. The conductor replies, “Um… in about ten minutes.”.
There are two things we want to do in Osaka. The first is lunch at Barbacoa, a Brazillian churrasco (grilled meat on skewers) restaurant. This was one of our favorite restaurants in Tokyo, but the Tokyo branches were all booked weeks ahead of our stay in that city. Lunch at Barbacoa is, as we’d hoped, fantastic. The girls don’t see what the fuss is all about, but Liya’s up for trying the endless variety of grilled meat brought by the waiters. She loves the pepper steak, and keeps asking for it again. The waiter says they’re making more, but it’ll take a while. She waits and waits. She sings a little song, “I want my pepper steak”, to the tune of a Backyardigans song. Finally a waiter brings out a new pepper steak straight to our table, and Liya happily takes some more. This time, Anya wants to try it. We’re all stuffed. The girls end the meal asking if we can find a churrascaria when we get home.
The second reason we’re in Osaka is to visit the Kaiyukan, an absolutely huge aquarium. Several other people had suggested to us that this aquarium was reason enough to make a trip with kids to Osaka.
We take the subway to the edge of the harbor, where the Kaiyukan is located. Entering the building, we go up a long escalator, and then spend the next two hours or so following the long, descending route through the aquarium. There’s a lot to see, but the highlight is the immense, 30 foot deep central tank. It houses a large number of fish, many rays and sharks, including two baby whale sharks. We’re lucky enough to see whale shark feeding time, when both sharks swim vertically at the surface, gulping enormous quantities of water filled with krill.
Anya and Liya are delighted that the Kaiyukan’s touch tank is stocked with rays and small sharks: way more interesting than the usual starfish and anemones.
The descending aquarium route inevitably brings us to the large gift shop. “Look, whale shark slippers!” exclaims Anya. Even Angela gets a small stuffed whale shark — they’re pretty cute.
Back in Kyoto, we take a taxi to dinner. It’s driven by a chatty grandmother, who gives (re-gifts?) us a big bag of green tea when we get off. Our dinner destination is a branch of Akiyoshi, our favorite yakitori restaurant. (Today is grilled meat on skewers day.) Unfortunately, it turns out that they’re closed on Mondays. Everyone’s starving, and we have no idea what else is close by, but we manage to find another yakitori place a few doors down, and it’s not bad. We also try kushiyaki, fried stuff on skewers.
On the way back to the hotel, we stop at the Teramachi Street pedestrian shopping mall. The previous evening, Angela and Anya had discovered a little hole-in-the-wall place called Churro-Star that sells only churros (fried Spanish dough sticks). They both want to stop there again. We all order a churro, and they all disappear immediately.
Kyoto to Disney. We take the shinkansen back to Tokyo, then the train to Maihama station. With all our moving around, we’ve been taking advantage of the amazing domestic courier services that will ship luggage to your next destination in a single day. It’s an incredibly convenient service, but today we’re just moving our luggage on our own. Even Bree does a good job pulling her own bag.
We arrive at the Disney resort Gateway station, and pick up our DisneySea tickets for tomorrow and Thursday. Tokyo Disneyland is nearly an exact copy of the Anaheim resort, but the adjacent DisneySea resort is a water-themed park unique to Tokyo.
We have some time before we can check in to the hotel, so we walk around the Ikspiari shopping mall a bit. We get a snack at Starbucks, and Jan shops for a book at Maruzen. He finds a copy of “Seirei no Moribito” (Guardian of the Spirit) by Nahoko Ueshima. Anya and Liya have been reading an English translation they borrowed from Emily and Elena earlier on the trip. Given that Jan can only read half the book’s title, it’s probably too hard to read, but it’s nice to have a goal.
We take the Mickey Mouse-themed monorail to the Bayside station, transfer point to our hotel. All the resort hotels have shuttle buses waiting there, so we board the one for our hotel. We have to wait a few minutes for the bus to depart. The bus finally pulls out of parking lot into the street, makes an immediate left into a driveway, and now we’re at the hotel door. Total ride time: 45 seconds.
The girls are very happy to play in the hotel pool after a day of trains. It takes such a long time to get them out of pool and changed for dinner that we decide it’s too late to go somewhere interesting for dinner, so we go downstairs to the hotel restaurants. We pick a European-inspired restaurant, but it’s spotty: some of the food is fine, but the food takes forever to arrive.
DisneySea, Day One. The weather report called for rain, but it’s actually clear and nice. This is exactly the right weather for a theme park: the threat of rain keeps the crowds down. There are still plenty of people waiting to enter DisneySea when the park opens at 9:00 am. Everyone hustles inside heading straight for their favorite ride.
When we brought Anya and Liya to DisneySea in 2007, we spent most of our time on the tame rides in the Mermaid’s Lagoon. Now they want to do the thrill rides: The Temple of the Crystal Skull, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and the Raging Spirits roller coaster. This last one has a small loop in it. Jan doesn’t really care much for roller coasters, but eventually tries this one, and even he admits the loop isn’t really scary.
Bree’s now the perfect age for the the rides in Mermaid’s Lagoon: Scutter’s Scooters, Jumping Jellyfish, Blowfish Balloon Ride, and Flounder’s Fish Coaster. She’s initially scared of the teacup ride, but eventually tries it and laughs through the whole thing.
As we enter the “Arabian” area of the park, Anya smells curry popcorn, and doesn’t want to do anything else until she gets some. (Later on, she buys some more.) We can all enjoy the Sinbad ride, which is sort of like Pirates of the Caribbean. Liya’s particularly charmed by the cute little tiger who shows up in all the ride’s scenes.
Mostly done with rides for the day, we watch the afternoon “Mythica” water and dance show, grab a snack at the bakery, and call it a day. The girls enjoy the hotel pool again. This time, we get them out of the pool in time to ride back to the Ikspiari mall for dinner. We eat at Pitta 00, a pizza and pasta joint. We’ve eaten Italian-style pizza at least three times on this trip; Jan suggests that, when we go to Italy, we should be sure to eat a lot of Japanese food.
We all happen to be wearing Keens today.
DisneySea, Day Two. More rides today. Bree’s completely conquered her fear of the teacup ride, so she enthusiastically boards the ride with Jan. Jan ensures their cup gets spinning fast enough — fast enough that he’s sort of ill after the ride. “Let’s go again!” Bree shouts. “Umm… maybe later”, says Jan.
The most interesting part of the day is the discovery of a treasure hunt in the medieval fortress in the Mediterranean Harbor area. The girls excitedly follow a sequence of clues through the slightly bewildering staircases and rooms that make up the fortress complex. Some of the rooms are gorgeous, particularly the room with a huge astronomical orrery (planetary model) the kids can power by turning cranks. A fun moment comes when Anya finds the next clue location: a set of buttons on a wooden door. Liya presses the buttons in the right sequence (Anya needs to have a try too), and the image of a crab in the door’s ironwork lights up to indicate the next location to visit. The treasure hunt ends in the alchemist’s laboratory, where Anya gets to use a large press to emboss a seal on our paper treasure map.
We go back to the hotel to pack up for our return trip tomorrow, and make one last trip to the pool. We return to the DisneySea park for dinner at the S.S. Columbia dining room on the large “cruise ship” model in the park. The girls are somewhat troublesome before the food arrives. Jan and Angela are glad we’re just having dinner in a fancy cruise ship dining room simulation instead of an actual fancy cruise ship dining room.
We do a few final rides — a railroad trip to the Port Discovery area, a ride on the Aquatopia “hovercraft” cars — then find seats for the nightly Fantasmic show. (Disneyland California has a Fantasmic show too, but this one seems different than what we remember of that show.) Unfortunately, the wind has picked up a bit, and the park has to cancel its nightly fireworks performance.
All good trips must come to an end — but before we leave Japan today, we’ve got time to squeeze in one last visit with friends. We take the Limousine Bus to Narita Airport, where we meet up our friends, the Yamamuras. After checking all our luggage, we’ve got about three hours of free time before we need to be back at the airport.
We take the train to Narita City, where it happens to be the first day of a festival. As we’re eating lunch in a ramen restaurant, a small group of festival participants pulling large cart stops their marching right outside the restaurant, where we get to watch them do a little dancing. After lunch, we walk towards Narita-San temple, stopping at some of the shops and festival booths along the way for various desserts snacks. Before boarding the train back to the airport, we make one last stop at a Family Mart convenience store so the girls can load up on Hi-Chews and other Japanese candies.
The flight back to Seattle is shorter than the flight out, but nevertheless somewhat harder on Liya. (She gets sick when she’s really tired.) We catch a taxi back to our house, and arrive home about 10:00 am. It’s 2:00 am in Japan, so we all collapse for a morning nap.
Now we are six.
Now that Bree’s six, we said she could have a sleepover – something she’s been asking for for a while. We host her friend Nora, who moved to Portland last year, but is visiting Seattle for the week.
For Bree’s birthday party this year, she invites a number of friends to our neighborhood park for a beach party. Guests: Jack, Lauren, Nora, Rani, Annalise. Our friend Siri also comes for the first half of the party.
Each child receives a sturdy sand shovel as a party favor, and they all spend the next three hours digging and splashing at the water’s edge. Ice cream from the ice cream truck is also thoroughly enjoyed. Fringe benefit: no house clean-up after the party.
Anya and Liya (pictured) are doing a camp that’s a combination of chess in the morning and fencing in the afternoon.
Bree helps bring out everything for our annual family camping trip. This year we’re going back to Ohanapecosh Campground on Mt. Rainier. We’re going to try camping for three nights instead of our usual two. We’re also going to be joined by Jan’s sister Skye and his mom, which will be another first for us. Can’t wait!
The drive to Mt. Rainier goes quite quickly, even with a stop at a general store to pick up more candy. We get to the campsite around 3:15, and Jan’s sister, Skye, and mom, Lyn, arrive shortly thereafter. While the adults are setting up the tents and all, the girls busily explore the little stream that runs through the campsite, and the surrounding woods and riverbank. They quickly make a friend, a girl named Juliette, whose family is staying at a nearby campsite.
After a camp breakfast of toad-in-the-hole (who came up with that name, anyway?), we pack a picnic lunch and hike from Ohanapecosh Campground to Silver Springs. The girls pose for a photo with Aunt Skye.
Silver Springs turns out to be a nice waterfall, and a nice spot to have lunch.
After lunch, Lyn takes the girls back down to the campground, while Jan, Angela, and Skye continue on to the Grove of the Patriarchs. This is a nice stand of huge, old-growth trees. It’s gotten a bit a warm, so we stop to cool off in the Ohanapecosh River. It’s cold — this water was probably snow yesterday.
On our second full day camping at Mt. Rainier, we drive up to Paradise. We eat lunch at the lodge there, then go on a modest hike to the Nisqually Glacier overlook. Bree hikes with a hiking stick in one hand, and a lollipop in the other.
The alpine wildflowers at Paradise are gorgeous in summer. This is a meadow of avalanche lilies. Even in late July, you can still see new flowers pushing up through patches of melting snow.
Back at the campground, the girls take Jan down to the river so they can show him a small sandy beach they discovered yesterday. The girls love scrambling over the rocks.
The girls find some beautifully-colored stones in the river. The water is amazingly clear. And really, really cold.
Liya checks to make sure her post-dinner marshmallow is toasted just right.
After dinner and marshmallows, Grandma tells a ghost story around the campfire.
Time to break camp and head home.
Summertime cutie