From the Sublime to the Ridiculous: Fish Market, Buddhist Temple, Maid Café

We woke up early on Friday to head over to the Tsukiji fish market. This is where the wholesalers sell their daily catch to the restaurants.

It was a bustling place with vehicles zooming by from all directions with loads of boxes of various types. Kai was not happy to be such a place and did not seem to care about the various fish I tried to point out to him.

Here he is standing next to a couple octopuses.

We soon found out that we weren’t supposed to be there. A security guard informed us that visitors are not allowed before 9AM (the time when things start to settle down), and children are not allowed at any time. That explains why it seemed so unsafe to be there.

We quickly made our way out, happy to have caught a glimpse of the famed market.

Tsukiji is surrounded by markets and restaurants. The plan for this morning was to find a sushi restaurant where the fish was bound to be fresh and tasty. There are many tiny restaurants, some with room for only two people to stand and eat, but we found a bigger place where we could sit comfortably together.

Kai had his favorites – shrimp and octopus sushi, along with a big bowl of miso soup filled with clams.

After breakfast, we walked up and down the narrow streets, checking out the various shops.

Here is a shop that sells fruits. The watermelon was priced at 5,000 yen, approximately $50 for one. Peaches were more reasonable – 2,000 yen for a box of four, or $5 each.

Kai was content walking around in the heat as long as we had bottles of water or other drinks. Here he is with a Japanese soda.

After that, we walked over to a Buddhist temple.

My wife and Kai walked up front to say a prayer.

While we were there, we got to witness the Obosan (priest) doing a ceremonial prayer with a couple.

Next stop was the kabuki theater.

We did not see a performance but went through a small museum.

Here’s Kai standing behind a cutout of a kabuki costume.

From the seriousness of a Buddhist ceremony and kabuki theater, we went to the ridiculous.

We had lunch at a maid café. What is a maid café, you ask?

Apparently all the rage in the Akihabara district, young, innocent-looking waitresses dress up in maid costumes and treat customers as masters. It seems to attract a certain type of young male clientele, and tourists as well. During the day, it may be more kid friendly.

After lunch, my wife and Kai headed back to the hotel to take a break and use the pool. On the way back, they realized that I was carrying the iPad and Kai freaked out about not having his precious iPad during his break. My wife called to find out where we were and I could hear Kai screaming in the background. He was still upset when we met up.

I headed back to the hotel with them, and went to the pool with Kai. At an extra $20 per person per day, we decided that we didn’t need to both go to the pool with him.

Later, we went to the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which gave a great history of the city from the Edo period up to post World War II.

Dinner was at a chankonabe restaurant. Chankonabe is a Japanese stew eaten in large quantities by sumo wrestlers as part of their weight-gain regiment. We sat on the floor in traditional Japanese style.

And so it was another good day overall. It seems like Kai likes Japan.

Asakusa and Ginza – An Unexpected Day

After the many struggles the day before, I feared the worst on Thursday. It would be another hot day, and we planned to be out and about for most of it.

We started out by taking the subway to Asakusa, a section of Tokyo where hints of past centuries remain.

The main attraction there is the Sensoji Buddhist temple, and that was our first stop. Kai was in a good mood as we posed for pictures outside the entrance gate.

It was hot and muggy, our most uncomfortable day yet. Even my sister’s family who was used to humidity in the Washington DC area noted how much more humid Tokyo was.

But I was very glad that it didn’t seem to bother Kai so much as we walked past the numerous small shops that lined the path to the temple. We kept him hydrated and, unlike the day before, he did not voice loud complaints.

As we neared the temple, there are various rituals to participate in. One is to shake a metal container until one of 100 sticks fall out, revealing the number of a drawer from which you take a paper that tells you your fortune. Here is a photo of one of my nephews shaking the container.

There are good fortunes and bad. Kai’s was excellent.

While his cousins’ were not.

We then came upon a spot to light incense and then wave the smoke onto yourselves as the belief is that it has healing power. As Kai is really sensitive to smells and smoke, I didn’t think he would like this at all. But he was eager to participate.

Before entering the temple itself, you purify yourself with the temple water.

Inside the temple, my wife showed Kai to say a prayer.

After visiting the temple, we saw a bit more of Asakusa via the jinrikishas (rickshaws).

It was a fun way to see the sights in the area. And it was a lot cooler than walking around ourselves. The young men who took us around had to be in great condition.

After that, it was time to take the subway over to the Ginza, one of the tony sections of the city. We were meeting up with my father-in-law for lunch at Shabusen, a shabu shabu restaurant.

Shabu shabu is thinly sliced meats and vegetables that are boiled in water and served with dipping sauces. At this restaurant, you boil the meats and vegetables yourself. The meats take only seconds to cook. It makes for a fun communal experience.

After lunch, we went shopping on the Ginza. Well, mostly just looking with little actual buying.

And then my wife, father-in-law, Kai and I had to go to the train station to make reservations for the shinkansen (bullet train) for the next week when we would be traveling around other parts of Japan after leaving Tokyo.

Kai was content on his iPad and was patient while the rest of us waited in line to be served.

Unfortunately, we found out that the line we had waited in was for something else, and we had to go to a different train station. Not to go into all the details, we ended up waiting in two more lines, and the whole process took much longer than we had anticipated.

After being so patient through all the walking in the hot muggy weather, Kai finally got understandably very cranky, to put it mildly, as we went through the process of getting our train tickets.

My wife took Kai back to the hotel to enjoy the swimming pool while my father-in-law finished up the ticket purchases. Then my father-in-law and I went back to rejoin my sister and her family and did some more shopping.

Later, we all met back up and journeyed to a very small yakitori restaurant for dinner. We were glad to have my father-in-law with us as the restaurant was a very small place located on one of Tokyo’s many tiny streets in the Shinjuku area. We never would have found the place without him.

When I say the restaurant is small, that doesn’t begin to describe it. You literally had to sidestep sideways to make your way to the back. Then we walked up the narrow stairs to a small space on the second floor. Because we had reservations, the eight had a comfortable spot to sit together.

The place is a dive, and I say that in the fondest sense. It is the kind of hole-in-the-wall joint that middle-age men go after work to eat and drink. There wasn’t a single female patron in the place besides my wife and sister.

For dinner we ordered a variety of yakitori (grilled skewered food), including chicken, pork, beef, mushrooms, and asparagus. We tried pork cheeks and chicken liver among others. Kai enjoyed everything, except the liver perhaps.

The food was great! We ordered a lot and it was cheap by Tokyo standards. We stuffed ourselves at about a third of the cost of lunch.

Our lunch was upscale dining, whereas this is the type of place that locals hang out. It was great to experience both.

All of the food was excellent, but the best part of the day was that Kai was able to not just tolerate, but to enjoy so much of it. What I feared would be a stressful day turned out to be our best day yet.

The Challenges Begin

Our vacation had gone relatively smoothly so far, but this morning in Hakone we faced a few more challenges.

Our day started out fine with a nice buffet breakfast. I had a mix of western and Japanese dishes including tsukemono (pickled vegetables), kamaboko (processed fish), miso soup, and shumai (Japanese dumplings), along with scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage, eggs poached in the hot springs, and French toast.

After breakfast we drove up the winding mountain road to Owakudani, which is famous for kuro-tamago (black eggs) that are hard boiled in the sulfuric hot springs. Legend has it that eating one of these black eggs will add seven years to your life. (Japan has many of these types of legends).

Getting to the area where the eggs are boiled requires a short walk up a steep path. And that is where our problems began.

Similar to other times when we had to hike, after just a few steps, Kai started to complain loudly that he was too tired. And that it was too hot. And that he just could not do it.

Yes, it was hot. It was steep. But it wasn’t that long of a walk. Other kids much younger than Kai were bounding up the stairs with no problem. Is it too much to expect that he should be able to do the same thing without making it an ordeal?

I tried to encourage him up the hill but lost my patience when he kept complaining when he reached the top where there was actually a nice cool breeze.

I looked around and took pictures of the hot springs while my wife and in-laws took Kai back down.

I also bought a package of black eggs for all of us and then headed back down.

When I reached the bottom, Kai was much happier, and apologized to me.

Kai was intrigued by the black egg and wanted to live longer so he gladly ate one. (The photo shows him holding one that I already peeled.)

After that, we went to cool off and he had a snow cone that made him even happier.

But his good mood did not last long. We drove over to Hakone Sekisho, and Edo-period checkpoint. As we started a short walk to see the sights and exhibits, Kai was again loudly protesting.

Sigh.

This is going to be a very long vacation at this rate. This heat will be nothing compared to the days when we will be walking around outside for much longer periods of time.

His whining made me feel like putting him in jail.

After that, we were all ready to head back to Tokyo. Kai’s grandfather drove us down the road that wound around and down the mountain. It was too cloudy to see Mount Fuji, but it was very scenic nonetheless.

As we were driving, Kai started to complain loudly that he wasn’t feeling well. When a boy complains as often as he does, it is sometimes difficult to tell when he is really ill and when he is not. But this one seemed real so we asked his grandfather to find a place to pull over.

This road has very few places that have shoulders but luckily he found one quickly. My wife and I rushed out of the car but before Kai got out of the car, he threw up all over the floor in the back seat.

That just capped the morning we had had.

We drove back to Tokyo without further incident.

Kai’s grandparents ordered Domino’s pizza and Kai gobbled up a third of it all by himself. Obviously, he was feeling better.

After some time to relax, we temporarily said goodbye Jiji and Baba and headed to the Shinjuku section of Tokyo where we would be staying for the next few days.

My sister and her family would be arriving soon and the next part of our adventure will start.

They all arrived at the hotel around 7PM, very tired from having started their travels about 24 hours earlier with little sleep since. But they seemed happy to be in Japan, and we were happy to see them.

We found a small noodle shop for dinner. Kai had octopus and shrimp tempura. My brother-in-law had a curry dish. And the rest of us had various forms of udon, along with kara-age (fried chicken).

Now we have a big day of sightseeing ahead of us. No doubt it will be an adventure. Let’s just hope it will be a mostly pleasant one.

Hakone

A couple hours southwest of Tokyo, Hakone is set in scenic mountains. The five of us, including my wife’s parents, left Tokyo on Tuesday morning, with my father-in-law impressively maneuvering through rush-hour traffic. Streets are very crowded, of course, but the challenge is also that they are a bit narrower than many of the roads back home. And it’s not just the cars that crowd the narrow streets, but bicycles as well. I think it would be a challenge for me to drive, but I felt in capable hands with my father-in-law.

We arrived in Hakone late morning. Kai got mad when the wifi at the hotel didn’t work on his iPad. I had no sympathy as he had been on his iPad for a long time before we left his grandparents’ house in the morning. Could he not go more than a couple hours without having to get online? I swear the boy is going to push me to cut off his online time completely if he can’t accept some limitations like this.

Hakone is famous for hot springs, and the main attraction of our stay there would be the Yunessun, a hot springs spa and water amusement park, which was right across the street from our hotel.

The first thing that Kai wanted to do was the water slides. This was a major change as before he was always too scared to go on slides, especially body slides. And in places where swim goggles are not permitted, like this, he would get very anxious at the thought of getting water in his eyes.

So I was pleased that he wanted to go on slides. The first time, he spread his legs and arms to slow his speed. But at least he went down. And then wanted to go down again.

We did it several times before the grownups got hungry and wanted to eat lunch.

As walked back through the main indoor pool area, a simulated storm was brewing complete with thunder sound effects and flashing light.

Kai got scared and angry.

He started yelling how we had to leave right now. And what a terrible place it was.

I asked him why he was scared. He said that storms are dangerous and you should not be in the pool when there’s a storm. I told him that it was a fake storm, and that fake ones are not dangerous. He did not seem to care.

His anger escalated as the line for lunch was long.

I took him back to the slides while Mom and Jiji waited in line to get lunch.

When we got back to lunch, he was a bit settled down.

After lunch, we went to the other side of the park, the place where they have numerous hot springs spas. We tried each one.

We went in the coffee spa, which is said to contain real coffee made with hot spring water.

Then the green tea spa. And the wine spa. And several more.

Kai didn’t particularly care about those. And after a short time he had had enough. He wanted to go to the hotel to relax, which is his code for using his iPad.

I told him that once we left, we would not be able to get back in. He didn’t care; he wanted to leave. And so, before 2PM, we had finished up the main thing we drove up here for.

We went to our hotel room and I was able to get his iPad to connect to the wifi. My wife went for a massage.

Later, Kai and I went to use the swimming pool.

It was the largest hotel swimming pool I’ve ever seen.

The odd thing about the pool is that it is very deep. It was 1 meter deep on the shallow end, quickly drops to 2 meters, and then is 3 meters on the deep end. For those of you who, like me, can’t do the conversion, I could touch bottom at 1 meter, but even before 2 meters I no longer could.

Kai is now an excellent swimmer with great confidence so he wanted to race to the deep end. But as I have no such confidence in my own swimming abilities, I told him that we should stay at the shallow end. I didn’t want to put a damper on the vacation by drowning.

We stayed at the pool a good long time, long enough for Mom to finish her massage and join us.

And then it was time to use the Japanese bath.

For those not familiar, it is a custom for Japanese to take public baths together, particularly at onsen (hot springs) like this. Men and women are in separate areas, but otherwise you are naked with total strangers.

Kai has never been shy about his body, so he had no qualms about going to the bath. I, on the other hand, had to put my shyness to the backburner to partake of this custom.

I took Kai into the men’s side where we disrobed and then went to the shower room where we could clean ourselves before going into the bath itself. There were a few other people in the room, including the cleaning lady.

I made sure that Kai cleaned himself and rinsed off nicely. And then we went to the outdoor bath.

The water in the onsen is very hot. Kai does not like a very hot bath at home but he went in this one without complaint. Once immersed in the water, you get used to the warmth and start to relax.

We didn’t stay long, but it was long enough to get me to relax.

Later we went to the buffet dinner at the hotel. Kai loved that he could get unlimited dessert, which I allowed as he had eaten a full portion of some main dishes.

And so we had experienced a few bumps, but the day ended on a happy note.

But the challenges would build the next day.

Beginning to Explore Japan

After arriving in Tokyo on Sunday, we began exploring on Monday. We have a few days here before my sister and her family arrive so we decided to take the time to do things that Kai specifically might enjoy.

My father-in-law drove us the Rainbow Bridge over to Odaiba, a man-made island that is home to many forms of entertainment.

We spent the morning at Joypolis, and indoor amusement park run by Sega. There was a line to get in, and the noise at the entrance was quite loud between the crowd, blaring music, and all of the greeters shouting enthusiastically as patrons entered. Frankly, it was too much for me, and I was hoping that we would get inside before it all became too much for Kai. Thankfully we did.

We rode on several different rides. Kai was anxious as we waited to go on a simulated glider ride. It was a thrill ride, but I saw smiles on his face throughout despite his early anxiety.

Next was a simulated river raft ride.

My wife and I were happy that the announcements that you might get wet was in Japanese. Alas, Kai saw the pictorial signs and figured it out, and that got him anxious. But once again, he was all smiles during the ride itself.

My personal highlight at Joypolis was the men’s room where each urinal featured an animated video that activated when you started peeing. The video at my urinal was of a statue that peed into a fountain, and it measured your pee in ml, stopping when you stopped.

After that, we saw the Statue of Liberty.

Then, it was time for lunch at a buffet restaurant.

Then we walked over to the Sony ExploraScience Museum. It was not a big place, but every exhibit was interesting to Kai.

We then went shopping as Kai’s grandmother had given him a gift card. He found Nanoblocks, a Japanese form of Lego that features miniature blocks about a fourth the size of Legos.

We went for dinner at a kaitenzushi restaurant, where plates of sushi and other goodies go by on a conveyer belt. You take a plate of anything you want to eat.

At the end of the meal, they come by and count your plates. As you can see, we had quite a few.

And that was our Monday. We’re off to a busy Tuesday.

We Have Arrived!

The flight over to Japan was gratefully uneventful.

After a bit of anxiety at takeoff,

Kai was in bliss the whole 13 hours on the plane, watching movies on his iPad the whole time except for a couple breaks to try out the in-flight entertainment that including some video games.

I tried to get him to nap a little bit. I didn’t want him overly tired when we arrived, but I think he could go days without sleep with the stimulus of digital entertainment.

I tried to nap as well, but it’s hard when your son keeps interrupting to tell you where we are in the flight, or asking you to open the window shad so that he could look outside.

When we landed at Narita, Kai was well behaved waiting in line to go through Customs, and was happy to see his grandfather who met us at the airport.

Kai only got agitated when he found out that Jiji probably didn’t have wifi at his place (though we found out later that he does). The boy likes to stay connected, and the thought of going three days without wifi until we got to a hotel that had it was intolerable. That led to him laying on the ground and complaining that it was too hot. And we hadn’t even done anything yet.

But that episode didn’t last long when once we got in his grandfather’s car as he fell asleep before we reached our home for the next couple days.

We drove through a torrential rainstorm and Kai didn’t get too anxious.

Once we arrived, we had a hot Japanese bath, followed by a hearty Japanese dinner (fried shrimp for Kai, unagi (eel) for the rest of us),

My wife and I were soon ready for bed. Kai probably could have stayed up for hours, but we thankfully got him asleep so that we could sleep, too.

So we are off to a good start. But this morning will bring the first real challenges as we venture out to start our sightseeing.

Let’s see how it goes.

Departure Day

As the day of departure for Japan has arrived, some of my stress has faded into the background as I am finally starting to get excited about the trip.

Kai has been more nervous than excited, but this morning he was up at 6:30, excited about the vacation.

Everyone asks how he will do on the long flight – 13 hours. I think that will actually be one of the easiest parts of the trip as he can watch movies on his iPad to his heart’s content.

We’re at the airport and have happy faces so far.

We’ll soon be off. Wish us well.

Tanoshii: Anticipation of Our Vacation

Everyone at work asks the same question: “Are you excited about your vacation?”

And everyone looks at me quizzically when I say that I’m much more stressed out than excited. They look as if I’m crazy that I’m not heads-over-heels excited about our dream journey of going to Japan.

When my sister and I were kids, in the days leading up to our annual summer trips, our mom would always tell us that tanoshii ga ichiban i toki, meaning that the anticipation of the vacation was the best part. I don’t know if I fully agreed with that; the trips themselves were usually pretty great, too, but I now understand what she meant. The time leading up to the vacation is when you’re supposed to be excited.

So, why am I not?

Maybe it’s because I’m thinking about all the stressful experiences we have had with Kai on previous vacations.

There was the time in the Great Smoky Mountains when Kai yelled and screamed the entire way up the not-all-that-long hike to the top of Clingman’s Dome.

Then there was the time last summer in the Tetons when Kai was barely able to tolerate the long wait for the boat that would take us back across the lake to our car. The agony of that wait still seers in my memories.

And then there was the awful time when Kai had a very huge public meltdown at the aquarium at Niagara Falls when he didn’t get his turn to feed the seals because they ran out of fish.

And so I’m pretty sure something will happen on this trip, too. It always does.

And as destinations go, Japan will probably be one of the more challenging ones for Kai.

Japan is a small country with many people. And so it is very crowded in the big cities. Kai hates crowds.

Many people smoke in Japan, and they don’t have the non-smoking areas that we have here. Kai hates smoke.

Summer is not the ideal time to visit Japan. It is very hot and humid there now. Kai hates heat and humidity.

There are many places in Japan that abound with colors, noises, and activities. For Kai, that translates into an overload of stimuli.

There will be plenty of magnificent sights to see. Everyone will want to take their time to take it all in as this may be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for many of us. Kai doesn’t tolerate waiting very well.

And so, there is no doubt in my mind that Kai will get very upset. The only questions are when, where, how often, and how severe.

It is hard to deal with situations when Kai gets upset at home. It is more challenging when we face these types of situations in public.

But it will be even more difficult when things like this impact, not just me and my wife, but all of our family members who will be with us.

I so want this to be a great experience for everyone. I so fear that there will be major blowups that could ruin the trip for all.

Some have advised me not to worry about it. But that is an impossibility.

Besides, I think the best way to minimize the problems is to try to proactively act as best we can.

We have tried to set expectations with Kai. We have warned him of the smoke and crowds and waiting and all that. We have prepared a schedule so he knows what we might do each day. We are trying to come up with strategies for when challenges arise… for instance, my wife or I taking him back to the hotel to get a break.

But in the end I think there is only so much we can do.

And that reminds me of another of my mom’s sayings: shikata ga nai, which means it cannot be helped.

I oftentimes feel like I get disappointed when my expectations are too high. Maybe it will turn out to be the opposite this time.

We Are Headed For Japan

We made the decision last fall, on the drive home after spending Thanksgiving with my sister and her family.

We had just dropped my dad off at his house where he was still living on his own at the time, but it had become obvious by then that he needed to move into an assisted living facility.

Our dream vacation for my wife and I had been to visit Japan with Kai, so he could see the country where his mother was born and raised, and visit his grandparents in their homeland.

We had been waiting to go until Kai was old enough to appreciate and remember the trip, but also until he was able to cope with things better.

But on that drive home after Thanksgiving, my wife and I were contemplative. Her parents are still very sharp of mind and very healthy. But seeing my dad’s decline reminded us both that we should not take anything for granted.

And so we decided that the three of us would make the big pilgrimage this summer to visit them and to travel around my wife’s home country. Better to go now, a few years too early in terms of Kai’s readiness, perhaps, than to wait and have regrets later.

As we drove home that day, my wife asked if I wanted to invite my sister and her family to join us. The more I thought about it, the more excited I was about the idea of all of us having this momentous adventure together.

It was also an ideal time for them, in some ways. Both of their kids, my nephews, would have finished college but not be so far along in careers or relationships that would get in the way of making this journey. The only question in our minds was whether the boys would want to go; would they want to travel with us old folks?

The answer, it turned out, is yes. Apparently it took them all of a few seconds to say yes when my sister and brother-in-law posed the question.

“What would make you think that we wouldn’t want to go?” one of them asked us later.

And so, we will soon be on our way to Japan.

It is an exciting time, yes. But as the trip has drawn near, our most prevalent feeling has not been excitement. It has been stress.

More on that in my next post.