Home Sweet Home

We've been home for four days now and despite how excellent the trip was, it feel so good to be back!  The car company that drove us from our apartment in Yokohama to the Tokyo airport contacted us before the pick-up to say that all they had available was a full sized limo.  So Connor took his first limo ride and held his first champagne glass during the trip to Narita.

Connor was still getting over his cold during the flight, so he did not sleep, which meant the flight was not the same piece of cake that we experienced on the way to Japan.  It was all worth it for something that happened in the middle of the flight (while everyone else on the plane was fast asleep except the three of us) and is now permanently etched in my memory bank of wonderful moments.  I pulled out a container of cheese cubes and asked Connor if he would like some cheese.  He picked up a piece of cheese, got a huge smile on his face, turned to me and said with emphasis, "eat!".  This turned into a back and forth between the three of us saying "eat!" alternating with Connor actually eating pieces of cheese while laughing hysterically.  All three of us were cracking up and could not stop.  Possibly a choking hazard, but it was so funny, and this is the first word that we have heard him use intentionally.

We arrived home to a warm, sunny weekend with blue skies and palm trees swaying in the breeze.  It was a very welcoming scene.  Our house looked amazing, and during our time away we stumbled upon the key to growing artichokes.  Ignore them for a month.  We have actual artichokes now on the plants we put in over a year ago and have never seen action from!

 
It is such a luxury to be able to blabber to strangers in a language I am fluent in, to pop our clothes in the dryer and have them dry 45 min later, and to eat really good cheeseburgers.  And to see my life with fresh eyes upon coming back to it and realize there is absolutely nothing I would change.

Last Day in Japan - Sakura in Bloom

Today was our last full day in Japan - very hard to believe the three weeks have already gone by! It was finally a beautiful, sunny day after two days of cold and pouring rain. Connor and I are both feeling much better, and how can we not after hearing that the cherry blossoms are blooming a week earlier than usual? We are so lucky because in a normal year we would have missed them entirely! This afternoon we set off for Kamonyama Park, set on a hill above Sakuragicho and MM21. It is a well known spot for viewing cherry blossoms, and has a beautiful Japanese garden in the lower part of the park. The walk up the hill took us through the neighborhood with views of the downtown, harbor, ferris wheel and Landmark Tower peeking through the alleys at interesting angles.

Once in the park, we wandered through admiring the blossoming trees and marveling at our luck in timing.  The tranquil garden below provided a nice spot to stand in silence for a moment and reflect on our time in Japan.

This was the perfect way to wrap up the trip.  Japan, you've been wonderful to us.  San Diego, here we come!

Plane Bagels

We stopped at a neighborhood coffee shop to pick up bagels (which are pretty hard to come by here) to pair with the smoked salmon, red onion and cream cheese in our fridge.  We were glad to see that they had "plane":

Cute Japanese Truck of the Day

Finally I caught the garbage truck!  I have been waiting for a full three weeks to snap a shot of a truck so cute that it's hard to believe it carries trash.  Connor, this one's for you!

Takashimaya

Yesterday was a cold and rainy day, and I have caught Connor's ailment now. I never get sick - we are talking like once/year or less and usually I just feel uncomfortable for a day or two, no big deal. This cold is not a fun one, and I am in awe that my trooper of a baby toughed it out liked he did. Hope we are both feeling 100% for the flight home and that Dylan does not succumb!

We donned our rain gear and took the subway to Takashimaya, another huge department store in downtown Yokohama. It was really the best thing we could think of to do since it was pouring outside, and we had also heard that the food floor was even better than Sogo, and it will never get old to explore the food floors of these places. I have to say that I like the layout and the selection at Sogo more, though we have heard that Takashimaya has slightly better food vendors and a more experienced green grocer. We picked out fish to go with our bok choy, and also two small French cakes for dessert. Japanese desserts are really nothing to write home about in my opinion, so the few times that we have wanted sweets, we look for the French patisseries in these department stores. French desserts are never a mistake :)

We also made our final trip to a Japanese toy department and ended up buying a few more things for Connor. We are all kind of crazy for Anpanman at this point, as we started watching the cartoons at night and I now know the names of all the major characters. It is hard not to love a series where the characters heads are made of bread and can be replaced by a baker when something goes wrong. Connor got to add to his toy collection an Anpanman shovel and bucket for the beach, and the most awesome toy yet - an Anpanman firetruck with lights and sirens, and an Anpanman fireman who yells out things in Japanese as he saves people from fires. I never want to forget Connor's face when he first sat down to play with this toy.

We visited a well-known stationary store and picked out a few souvenirs, then made our way home through the wet and the cold streets into our cozy little apartment for the third to last night in Yokohama.

On The Mend

We think the worst of Connor's cold is behind us now - but it packed quite a punch! Yesterday was a tough day for him, with a cough that interfered with his naps by waking him up every ten minutes, and lots of congestion. He was pretty miserable, but strangely this kid does not ever wake up at night, apparently not even when he is really sick, so at least he caught a solid 13 hours of sleep there. We just stayed very close to home yesterday afternoon, with a short trip out to walk down Zaki Mall and then back home for a 5:30pm bedtime for the sick kid (he was ready!). Things are starting to look up today, and hopefully even more so tomorrow. We have taken a short hiatus from our daily adventures to tend to the little guy, so I thought I would post a couple of videos instead. We hope to visit Takashimaya tomorrow, then take our trip to Tokyo on Thursday, and finally wrap up our time in Yokohama with a visit to Sankeien Garden on Friday to view the cherry blossoms which officially have started to bloom!

For now, enjoy the videos :)

Connor has learned to drink from his cup:

And he has just started crawling on all fours as an alternative to the inchworm-drag move. Please excuse the sideways video, my iPhoto has a bug that will not let me rotate videos. Need to download a newer version!:

And he has also learned that gelato is a very delicious treat:

Sunday Afternoon - Local Style

Poor Connor is still sick - even a little worse today than yesterday.  We think it's just your standard cold, but a nasty one, and he did have a very slight fever last night so we started giving him Infant Tylenol (huge thanks to Sylvia for the tip to pack that!)  Fever is gone today, but the other symptoms are still in full swing.  We postponed our lunch plans with Dylan's business associate and his family because we didn't want to spread any germs and also we wanted to just keep things low-key and close to home for Connor.  We decided to walk to Yamashita Park and see what it's like on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  We passed by a street performer with a nice-sized crowd of locals watching, then a ton of families picnicking, playing frisbee and enjoying the sunny t-shirt weather.  Next we checked out the bottom deck of the Hikawa Maru (fascinating history here) and purchased Seventeen brand ice cream from a vending machine. Finally as we ventured to the northeastern end of the park, we listened to some live music that was part of the Kanagawa Music Summit, whose slogan is "All You Need is Music, Music is All You Need."  Connor even got a balloon that made him excited at first, then angry, and we ended up having to pop it so that it would stop teasing him.  He seemed to really enjoy getting out and seeing the sights, and we are really hoping that he's feeling better tomorrow.

Birthday #1

One year ago right now (CA time) I was in a tub of warm water getting ready to wrap up the final stretch of the hardest work I have done to date - giving birth to Connor, my baby, who was born one hour and seven minutes before the spring equinox. Fast forward a year and here we are in Japan sharing soba noodles with a beautiful little boy who completes our world. Happy Birthday #1 Connor!

The bad news is that our little guy who never gets sick has caught a cold just in time for the festivities. He is really not feeling well today at all, but by nature he is not a complainer and has been in pretty good spirits despite the cough and perpetual runny nose. He opened his Anpanman present this morning after breakfast and then did a bit of clowning around for the camera:

An unexpected birthday surprise today was spotting the regular-sized version of the bread truck on the street that is one of Connor's new toy trucks from Isetan. The toy looks exactly like the real truck!

This afternoon we ran a bit late so missed the parade portion of the St. Patrick's Day Festival in Motomachi, arriving just in time for some live Irish music and dancing.  It was a gorgeous, warm, windy, sunny spring day - perfect weather to be outside walking around:

Then we headed home for cake. Connor had three mini cakes that we spent the afternoon shopping for yesterday in Sogo -- the three prettiest little cakes in the whole dessert department!  Cake #1 was lemon/tangerine and had a cute white chocolate ladybug hanging out on top, cake #2 was dark chocolate raspberry and cake #3 was strawberries & cream.  I would say that cake isn't a huge hit with Connor, but it's unclear if this is because he is not feeling well, or just does not have a sweet tooth.  We laid the three cakes out in front of him, sang happy birthday, blew out the candle and then waited to see what would happen.  He looked at each cake, touched the lemon and chocolate cakes tentatively, wiped his fingers on his chubby little thigh and then started to cry.  We helped him to taste a bit of the chocolate cake, but he really wasn't impressed at all.  Maybe we should have just put a candle in a steamed bun.  Hope he feels better tomorrow!

(Tried to upload videos of the Irish dancing/singing and the cake and experienced technical difficulties, so the above photos are "snapshots" from the video).

Impressions of the Social Scene

During our time in Japan I've noticed an overwhelming sentiment of politeness, graciousness and attention to detail while shopping inside stores (which is our main source of personal interactions).  It is very common to step into a shop and be showered with pleasantries and gratitude during the entire shopping experience.  You may be welcomed as you step into the store, then thanked for shopping during the time you are browsing, and then for your patronage while checking out and again as you are leaving.  The clerks take the utmost of care with packaging up your purchases (even in a no-frills supermarket) with extra bags, padding, elastic bands around things, plus accessories that you may like such as tiny spoons or condiments if you are buying prepared food.  Many times you will receive a bit of a bow as you are leaving.  This is a far cry from the American experience where you might get a short greeting on the way in, but then you are mostly left alone after that and your purchases just kind of tossed into a bag any which way.

It is a very different situation on the street or in the train station where it seems to be every man for himself (and every woman for herself).  People are mostly looking down, not acknowledging each other and definitely not smiling.  Folks also seem to be in a huge rush to get where they are going.  I have been surprised many times at how when people are getting off the train, or just walking down the street they will push others out of their way, or just keep walking with a purpose until the other person moves out of their path.  When preparing to board the trains, everyone queues up in these neat little single file lines, but then when the train arrives and the doors open, it becomes a free-for-all to climb on board first.  We've even seen a business man barrel ahead from the back of line and almost knock over an elderly lady who was stepping into the subway car.  The strangest part is that he didn't seem sorry and she didn't seem to mind at all.

Language Fun

I took four years of Japanese in high-school, and the longer I stay here the more words are coming back. Unfortunately I would say that my vocabulary is only around 100 words, yet I am able to have extremely basic conversations (with lots of gesturing) about such topics as:

* Where is ...?
* How much for this?
* Two, please
* Do you do take-out?
* Is there an english menu?
* Thank you, Hello, How are you, nice to meet you, etc.

I have recently been relearning the 'generic' counters. In Japanese, in addition to the normal numbers there are sets of counters for all sorts of things. For example, if you're talking about a number of small animals, you use the counter 'hiki'. So you'd say: Two dogs-hiki. If you were talking about large animals, you'd say: Two horses-to. And so on. Anyways, I have been re-learning the 'generic' set, which is the one you use if you don't know the counter for the thing you are talking about.

While buying lunch today the woman helping me corrected my counter (since we were talking about long thin items and therefore should have been using -hon), and that motivated me to look into it a little more. Turns out there are hundreds of different counter types:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_counter_word#Full_list_of_counters

Yikes! I think I'll stick with just the generic ones.

Also, I had an amusing 'conversation' with a clerk at our local supermarket today. I was trying to ask which of the many bottles of liquor in the booze aisle were sake bottles. He looked very confused by the question and pointed me to the beer and all around. I asked again and got another confused look. Eventually I just picked a bottle. When I got home I looked it up and in Japanese 'sake' means alcoholic drinks in general...I can understand the clerk's confusion now! The word I was looking for was Nihonshu...

Typical Lunches / A Good Food Adventure

A typical lunch for Connor - mashed avocado mixed with plain yogurt, chopped strawberries, cubes of tofu, chunks of scrambled egg and broccoli/pear/pea puree:

The avocados here are amazing - so smooth and creamy.  The funny thing is that they come from Mexico, yet they are much better than what we would typically find at Trader Joes back in San Diego.  We finally found plain whole milk yogurt (Connor's favorite thing other than steamed buns) after lots of trial and error, which is what you do when you can't read labels.  The eggs here are stored on the shelf like in New Zealand (not refrigerated) and they are super-fresh with bright orange yolks.  The strawberries are deep red even in the middle and soft and juicy - much better than what we would find at the supermarket in the US.  I have been pleasantly surprised by very high quality of things at our basic corner supermarket, which is really not a fancy place.

A typical lunch for us - unagi (eel) nigiri, tuna and cucumber sushi roll, salmon, octopus and sea scallop mini nigiri, tamago/pickle roll wrapped in leafy green instead of nori and one small glass of sake (which tastes so good with rice and fish):

We have been totally loving the food here, so much fresh fish and green tea and seaweed, tofu, tempura and udon noodles galore, and exotic rice cracker varieties for snacks.  We've also gotten into drinking a small cup of sake with all meals as it really compliments the flavors of the food.  There have been many times during the trip that we haven't been quite sure exactly what we were eating and have been surprised by flavors.  I am in heaven as there is almost nothing I love more than a good food adventure :)

Cosmo Clock 21

Dylan put his fears aside this afternoon and accompanied me and Connor to Cosmo World for a ride on Cosmo Clock 21, the gigantic ferris wheel located in the Minato Mirai Shinko (new harbor) District.  Cosmo Clock 21 was built in 1989 with a height of 353 feet and was the world's tallest ferris wheel until eight years later when the Tempozan Harbor Village ferris wheel was constructed in Osaka with a height of 369 feet.  Shortly thereafter Cosmo Clock 21 was dismantled and relocated to a taller base which gave it the same height as the ferris wheel in Osaka.  Apparently the ferris wheel world is very competitive here in Japan!  Cosmo Clock 21 has 60 cars and each car seats 8 people.  Dylan has a fear of heights, but he decided to brave it.  He spoke of regret halfway up and asked me to stay still for the remainder of the ride to minimize our risk of falling out, but we ended up making it out in one piece:

Connor enjoyed sitting in the cartoon cars in the amusement park down below, especially Anpanman (the first pic).  Anpanman is the most famous children's cartoon character in Japan and his head is made of a bun.  The creator of Anpanman came up with the idea during WWII when faced with the prospect of starvation.  He dreamed of eating a bean/jam filled pastry called an Anpan and Anpanman was born.  Many of the other heroes of the cartoon also have bread for a head, such as (Shokupanman) white bread, (Currypanman) curry-filled bread, (Melonpanna) melon bread and (Creampanda) a cream bun.  Watch an Anpanman cartoon here:

Then we took the subway to Chinatown to pick up some more steamed buns.  I am not kidding, we each ate one (Connor too) on the way home.  The arm flailing was in full force, though he looks pretty mellow here:

Connor's Favorite Apartment Activity

Standing at the big window looking down at the intersection below and watching people, bikes, cars & trucks.  The garbage truck is coming around the bend in this shot:

Cute Japanese Truck of the Day

I'm not sure if the scale comes across on this photo, but it is a pic of a very cute and tiny Japanese Coke truck.  I can only imagine the adorable little glass bottles it carries inside.  Seriously, the cars and trucks here all look like toys!

Chinatown & Steamed Buns Obsession

Yokohama's Chinatown is the largest in Asia and one of the largest in the world - and it is indeed enormous!  We decided to spend our afternoon working our way through the narrow streets, stopping at shops, visiting the Kan-Tei-Byo and Mazu Miao temples, watching the hustle and bustle around us, and sampling the culinary specialty of the neighborhood - steamed buns.  The pics are of the Goodwill Gate  (there are 9 gates in total), the streets, some ducks waiting to be prepared (I saw these from an alley and when I peeked in further I saw twelve more hanging right inside - did not tell Connor they were duckies!), and Mazu Miao Temple:

During our time wandering around, we noticed almost everyone around us eating buns that looked to be stuffed with something.  In many of the shops you could see teams of workers making these buns next to bamboo steamers with steam puffing all around them.  Before leaving Chinatown, we chose a vendor to purchase a couple from to see what they were all about.  These steamed buns are so good that after my first bite, I gave Connor a small bite, and then he frantically flailed his arms until he had devoured at least half of mine.  We have never seen him so excited about a food item before.  That was when we decided to go right back and purchase four more.  They were all filled with different things, but we agreed on a favorite version and I think it was stuffed with chicken, mushrooms, ginger and scallions.  We ate a few on the way home, and then Connor ate another one with his dinner.  I think he is having dreams about steamed buns right now, and I just might too: