Part 1: Sunday- Tuesday
Brent and I have been talking about taking our kids to Disneyland for a couple of years and we discovered that it's so much cheaper to go in Tokyo than the US. So that got us thinking- wouldn't it be cool to experience another country all together?
This trip took a LOT of planning. Every Saturday last Fall I would spend several hours planning - and I used ChatGPT a lot! First we had to get passports for everyone. One Saturday I researched about the different times of year and their pros and cons for traveling to Tokyo. Another Saturday, I researched flights and booked them, and another Saturday I researched hotels, etc.
There was not a perfect time to travel between Brent's and the kids' different school schedules, and my busy work times. We decided to travel after the New Year's rush and went over Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We knew it would be cold, but the trade off was that it would be less busy.
Audrey could hardly wait - she kept asking how many days until we go to Disney? The day finally arrived. We flew out on a Friday at about 2;00 pm, after a very busy week of preparing to leave. We had a direct flight to Haneda airport in Tokyo, which took 9.5 hours from Honolulu (it's only 6.5 hours returning home). So we arrived at Friday night almost midnight our time, but Saturday 7pm Tokyo time. I was so nervous about Kai on the plane, since even one hour in sacrament is hard for him to sit. He did so great though! Brent and I traded off entertaining him with his toys, drinking his bottle, and walking up and down the aisles. He fell asleep for the last few hours of the flight too. Notice Audrey jumped right in to the culture and put on the slippers we were all given.
Happy Coen spread out on the beds.
Because of the time difference, Kai woke up at 4am (which was 9am in Honolulu). Brent took him out to the lobby and terrace so that the other kids could sleep a bit more. As the week progressed Kai moved his wake up time to 5am, and eventually 6am.
Video of Kai at 4:30am at the hotel with Brent
All of us were up and starving by about 6am that first day. And so hungry since we hadn't eaten much dinner the night before. So I took the kids to breakfast at the hotel. It was expensive, but I think the kids did pretty good getting our money's worth, as they each ate about 10 pancakes and other things. They were fascinated by the machine that makes pancakes, and I enjoyed the chef making omelets.
After our tummies were full, we set off for church by the temple, since we knew an English ward meets there. Since our hotel was on the very eastern side of the city near Disney, it was quite the process to get into Tokyo. First we had to ride the hotel's shuttle to the train station. The shuttle only left about once an hour, so it was always a rush to make sure we didn't miss our shuttle since the Japanese people are extremely punctual and all shuttles and trains run ON TIME.
After the shuttle to the train station, we had to figure out how to buy our subway tickets. With some help from the workers and google translate on our phone, we found the correct machines. We discovered that not all machines took American credit cards, often only yen. So, at one of the spots along the way we had to go back outside and across the street to an ATM. Once at the machine, we'd put in our destination into Google maps and it would tell us which lines we were going to take, and where to make the different connections.
The subways and stations were extremely clean. They were also very quiet, as the Japanese people are respectful and there's just no talking or noise coming from phones on the subways.
After church we took the subway north, as I had planned for us to go to the famous Shinto shrine Meiji Jingu. Today there was a lot of walking through clean and cultural Tokyo streets:
Brent found a ramen shop he wanted to try out. It looked like this shrine we were going to was in the middle of a huge green space/park, so I said, how about we eat our food in the park near the temple?
.... Bad idea. The kids were starving, and this park was insanely HUGE, and no eating was allowed. Actually, come to find out eating in public, especially while walking, if frowned upon culturally. There was a lady with a megaphone yelling in Japanese, directing the THOUSANDS of people which way to go to get to the shrine. We just kept walking and walking and there was no place to sit, let alone eat!
But we did pass a whole street of ice sculptures, so there's that.
It was so beautiful here, but everyone was cold and hungry.
We pushed on, trying to find the famous shrine, with all directions being in Japanese. We finally made it! And there were like thousands of people in lines in front of the shrine. We couldn't figure out what they were in line for and went around up front, and saw they were in line to do their prayer rituals. They would do two bows, two claps, and then one bow. We couldn't see much of the shrine because of all the people around (which I discovered was still busy left over from the New Year). But Ava and I did get a picture a little bit out front.
Ava will take over writing about the store: The store was very cool. It felt like we were in the Harry Potter world. It was magical creatures themed, so they had a giant Buckbeak, and trees all around.
They had a Honeydukes. We got butterbeer with cream and butterbeer ice cream. I didn't like it but Coen did.
Heading back to our hotel that evening, we almost got lost in the subway system, as we were having trouble finding our way back to the station near the hotel. We couldn't find the stop we needed as an option to buy in any of the machines. There were no workers around, and we tried pointing to the subway stop name on our phone and motioning to a lady by us. She looked at us with some pity, and then went and got a map of the subway system, which is a huge cobweb of lines! We kept trying to figure it out, when we saw an English speaking man. He was able to figure out how we could get back to where we needed to, yes!
We barely made it in time for our shuttle at the train station to get back to our hotel. As we found the shuttle stop, I yelled to Brent, "It's right here!" There was a man and his wife waiting for the shuttle, and he said to me with a little smile on his face, "What part of Utah are you from?" I looked back at the kids to see if anyone was wearing anything identifying from Utah, which was a no. I then said to him, "Is it because we have a lot of kids?" He laughed and said yes - he remembered us from the hotel. We definitely were an anomaly in Tokyo, where everyone has 1-2 kids.
We got back to the hotel pretty late in the evening. I hadn't eaten much, so I ordered room service - I got a steak and rice. It hit the spot! Because of my sensitive stomach and all of the stomach aches I get, I often didn't branch out and eat a whole lot of Japanese food or fast food. Ordering this same meal every night became kind of a joke, especially with the same room service employees come each time, but also my saving grace.
Monday was our day at Tokyo DisneySea! This theme park is unique to Tokyo and is based on any movies that have to do with water. On land you walk through different parts of the world, so there's Italy, New York, and Agraba.
By the way, the tickets to the Tokyo Disney parks cost $30 for kids, $40 for teens, and $60 for adults. So for our whole family it cost about $220 for the day - which is so much cheaper than at the US parks!
We mostly kept Kai in the front pack with Brent, but we let Kai walk around a little bit to stretch out his legs. He decided he was tired and laid down right there on the cement. He looked like roadkill! Ava and I were cracking up and I snapped a picture, and saw so many Japanese people gathered around cracking up too. This picture makes me laugh so much.
This was Audrey's first time to a Disney park. The very first ride I took her on was the Finding Nemo ride. Her face just lit up with a huge smile and wonder. Even though most all rides were in Japanese, they design the rides narratives to be universally comprehended. In the picture below we are on Scuttles Scooters in the Mermaid area. It was so fun to see the magic in her eyes.
Kai was big enough to ride on a fair amount of rides!
The mermaid lagoon area was my kids' favorite of Disneysea. It had lots of smaller rides, and a very cool indoor playground. Please notice Kai all bundled up in this picture!
The inside of the Mermaid Lagoon. Those are fun rides behind:
Brent took Ava and Coen on the ride in the volcano called Journey to the Center of the Earth. It's a fun roller coaster with a big drop at the end. The kids got off the ride and came walking up to me with big terrified eyes. Brent told me it was my turn to go next (we got riders swap tickets on most rides if Kai couldn't ride). I wasn't so sure I wanted to ride after seeing the kids' faces, but Brent convinced me and it was really fun, and not too scary. Brent and the kids were eating lunch while I went on the ride. Brent took a video :
A note about our lunch - I would give the food at the Tokyo Disney parks a solid 2/10. Not their strongest point.
Meeting Donald Duck:
Minnie Mouse:
The Frozen ride has the longest wait times. You can buy fast passes (about $10/person, per ride), but not until you have entered the park for the day. The fast passes for the frozen ride were all gone, so we went at the end of the day and waited 80 minutes. The ride is very similar to the one at Disney World and really amazing! Audrey loved it.
Ava and Kai in the land from Tangled, near the Rapunzel ride.
A short video of Rapunzel ride:
Also, a small confession. I have to admit that I hadn't thought about all of the rides being in Japanese?!!? It was ok since we all know the stories and songs, and the Disney magic is still there. I was also stupidly surprised by how many Japanese people there were in the parks. Haha. I guess I thought it might be more international like Walt Disney World is, but I'd say it was about 85% Japanese, and 15% international, but maybe 5% from the states.
I was holding Kai and Ava was pushing the stroller. I started getting worried, and we started picking up the pace and jogging. I called Brent, and he was also jogging, giving Audrey a piggy back. We ran and ran, with Ava and I carrying the stroller down stairs, etc. We met up with Brent just past the volcano, and at this point, I was looking at my watch and started telling Brent, there's no way! We still had to walk through the entrance of the park around the globe, and then walk through the parking lot to the shuttles, and we had something like 6 minutes left. We were all running like mad. When we got to the parking lot, I was SO tired, since I had been jogging all this time holding 20 lb Kai! Brent had run ahead, and I yelled to Ava, "Ava, switch me! I can't go on!" She came and got Kai from me and held him like a football and we sprinted through the parking lot to where we found the shuttle driver motioning, "it's ok, slow down." We hopped on the shuttle with maybe 30 seconds to spare. That was stressful because I wasn't sure if we could use uber, or how else we would get to our hotel this late at night!
Tuesday was our teamlab Planets day. We took the subway there, leaving about 1 hour before our start time at the museum. Here are the kids at the subway station:
Here the kids are coloring their own creatures. They take their creatures to be scanned in, and then they can find their creature "swimming" along the wall with others.
Here's Brent with his dolphin:
Teamlabs videos:
We got to jump along these balls, like we were in a nintendo game or something.
Ava jumping on the trampoline, with the art and music reacting to her.
A video of us going down a huge slide:
There were a lot more places to climb and draw, but since pictures aren't doing it justice anyway, we're going to move on to the water part, which we all agree was the absolute best.
Luckily I had read the night before that we might want to bring shorts. To enter the water section, you walk up a sort of waterfall (to clean our feet).
You then kind of bounce across something almost like bean bags to dry your feet and then you're ready to go into the next exhibits. Some had water, and some had mirror floors.
This exhibit was my favorite, the infinite crystal universe. It had floor to ceiling dots of light, which seemed to stretch into eternity since there were mirrors on the ceiling, floors, and walls. The light patterns could change and were influenced by the presence of people. I told Brent, I felt like I entered another dimension?!
This exhibit was the dance of the koi. We waded into calf-deep water, and projections of koi are swimming on the surface of the water. The koi are influenced by people, and turn into flowers and scatter when touched. They look so real that Audrey kept asking if the fish are real?
Here's a video of Ava and Coen trying to touch the koi:
This sphere room was the kids' favorite. They were basically huge beach ball things hanging from the ceiling or tied to the ground, but some could be pushed around. The colors of the spheres would change when touched, and the surrounding spheres would respond.
We ended up playing hide and seek in here, and Kai absolutely loved this room as you can see in the video:
teamLab Planets- a must if you go to Tokyo!
We decided to call it a sort of early day at about 3pm and head back to our hotel. Here's Kai drinking his bottle on the subway. He drank his bottle and slept in all sorts of places this vacation!
We happened to be in the very first car and Audrey watched the conductor drive our train.
The subway stations are very nice and have lots of shops, restaurants, and bathrooms. I did not see any homeless people anywhere, let alone anyone who did not look classy and well dressed.
We stopped by a grocery store to get some snacks and Japanese candy.
There was a Dominoes a couple blocks away from our hotel, right near a restaurant I wanted to try with Brent. We put Kai down for a nap and left him in the hotel with Audrey. We ordered pizza and had Ava and Coen walk with us to pick up their pizza, and then they walked back to the hotel on their own while Brent and I went on our restaurant. It felt safe enough that we felt confident to let Ava and Coen walk alone for a couple blocks at night! The kids were pretty excited for their movie night with pizza in the hotel, and Brent and I were excited for our date.
This was a yakiniku restaurant - a Japanese style where you cook your own small pieces of meat over a grill at your table. If you zoom in on the picture of the menu, you'll see it says "Beef guts." We didn't order those and instead ordered wagyu cuts of meat, which is really tender Japanese steaks.
None of the workers spoke English, but luckily they had this English menu, and a website where we could put in our order, so we didn't have too much trouble. Once we put in the order, it was brought out within maybe 1-2 minutes, which makes sense since it's raw :)
It was really fun grilling our own meat!
The meat was so so good, as you'll see in this video:
Something kind of funny was that Brent wanted more water, but the waiters never seemed to notice our empty glasses. He thought maybe he should put in more orders of water on the website, but they still didn't bring us water. Finally I got the attention of a waiter and motioned to them our empty cups, and said one of my three Japanese words, "Thank you." That waiter brought us some more water. At the end of the night as we were getting ready to leave and standing up, our waiter showed up with 6 cups of water, looking all confused. We think he finally got the message from the app. Haha. We tried to do sign language to say we didn't need it anymore. Luckily water is free in Japan.
Also, when Brent went to pay for our dinner in the app, he may or may not have accidentally clicked "re-order," like reorder our whole meal. "Oh shoot! Go tell them we don't need the dinner again!" Haha. I got out my phone and typed it out in google translate and held it up to them that we were just trying to pay and didn't need the whole dinner again. They understood and said the second order was not going through. They probably thought we were crazies.
Back at the hotel, Ava held down the fort - good job Ava!
