April 8, 2012 - Yoyogi Koen

We wanted to take the kids to see cherry blossoms en masse.  We decided to visit Yoyogi Koen, a very large park near our home.  We started out with an errand to get some pool cues repaired, and then we headed to the park to walk through it on the way home.  We thought that the park would be crowded, and indeed it was (and this is before you actually get to any cherry trees):

People spread tarps under the cherry trees and sit and eat and drink.  Alcohol is often a large part of a hanami party.  But not always: one of my Japanese teachers said she and some of her relatives sat under the cherry trees drinking tea.  However, at Yoyogi Koen, alcohol was definitely involved.  Drew said it reminded him of an SEC tailgate party.  After I saw the Japanese man in a cherry tree wearing only his underwear, which he then pulled down, I thought it reminded me of Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras.  We did go fairly late in the day, around 5 pm.  So some of the people we saw had been there ALL day. 

I can't remember if all four of us or only three of us had our phones and were taking pictures.  Either way, I had a LOT of pictures for this walk.  Here are a "few" of our pictures:

April 7 and 15, 2012 - Hanami

With a cherry tree in our backyard, we felt we needed to have some people over for hanami.  Hanami means flower viewing and is the traditional Japanese custom of enjoying the beauty of flowers.  It almost always refers to cherry blossoms.  We had just noticed that our tree had a bunch of blossoms on Thursday.  It seemed like short notice to pull something together for Drew's office for this weekend, so instead we invited over two neighborhood families for Saturday, April 7 (each of whom has a child who's a friend of one of our kids).  The day ended up being cold and rainy, so we enjoyed the cherry tree from inside the house.

Here is a picture of what our tree looked like on Friday, April 6, the day we sent out the invitation to Drew's office for the following weekend:

We had about 35-40 people come.  I didn't think to take pictures at the party (pretty sure it was because I was too busy), but I did take a picture of some beautiful flowers my friend Whitney brought me for the party.

Part of the beauty in viewing the cherry blossoms lies in seeing them flutter the ground.  I certainly couldn't capture that with my iPhone camera, but here is a picture of all the cherry blossoms on the ground a day or two before the party.  If you look closely, you can see some of the blossoms in the air.

Although the cherry blossom forecast (yes, there is such a thing) said that peak cherry blossom time in Tokyo would go through April 15 (party day), alas, it was not to be.  Here is a picture of our cherry tree on the day of Drew's office party:

But the party went on as planned. :)  We did notice that day that another tree next to the cherry tree was starting to bloom.  When I checked with one of my Japanese teachers, I found out it was also a cherry tree, but a different, later-blooming variety.  How lucky, TWO cherry trees!

Japanese word of the day:  hanami  (click to hear pronunciation) means "cherry blossom viewing"

April 5, 2012 - Meguro

Yes, I've fallen behind again.  It's been sakura season here, so it's been a little busy with going to see cherry blossoms and having people over because we have a cherry tree in our backyard.

On April 5, I had the opportunity to join a Meguro River walking tour.  The tour met at Shibuya Station, which is about a half hour walk from my apartment.  From there we took the Tokyu Den-en-toshi Line to Ikejiriohashi station.  From the station we walked to the Meguro River.  The Meguro River is lined with cherry trees, which were in bloom.  It was quite the sight, and I took a bunch of pictures.  Really, how many pictures of cherry trees does one need?  I'm going to have to be selective and just put a couple in the blog, but I'm not sure how I'll pick them.  (The other reason I've fallen behind is the sheer volume of pictures.  I took about 70 pictures on this tour.)

At the start of our walk

We walked down the river towards Naka Meguro, stopping at pretty much every overpass to look at the blossoms and take pictures.  Most of the cherry trees pictured are Yoshino Cherry trees, the most common variety.  On one bridge a Japanese woman with three small dogs was holding them up one at a time to take a picture of them with the cherry trees in the background.  I offered to take a picture of her with all three of her dogs.  I didn't have any idea how to say it in Japanese, but you can get pretty far with hand gestures.

One of the bridges -
this one was pedestrian and bike only

Businesses who help sponsor the festival get their name on
some of the lanterns.  This was a nearby Italian restaurant.
At night, the lanterns are illuminated.

At one point (the red bridge pictured above) we detoured away from the river to visit Sugekari Koen, which was a grassy park with a separate Japanese garden.  Here our tour guide passed out cherry blossom cookies (good) and some kind of gummy cherry candy (not good).  Our guide said she had bought the treats from a grocery store at Meguro Station, from where I was going to depart to head back home.  I picked up some of the cookies to share with the kids, but I stayed away from the gummy candy. 

In the Japanese garden

Weeping cherry tree in the Japanese garden

Turtles sunning themselves in the river

This seemed very Japanese to me -
hide some construction with a picture of cherry trees.

There were many shops and cafes lining the river.  As we were there on a weekday morning, it was fairly quiet, but I imagine that is not the case later in the day and on the weekends.  As we walked, our tour guide also pointed out Naka Meguro Koen (park) and the River Museum.  The River Museum is free, which makes it a good destination for later with the kids.

A few more cherry blossom pictures (I asked Greer to help me pick four; she couldn't get it below five):

Some time after passing Naka Meguro Station, we reached Meguro Dori (street).  At this point we turned away from the river and visited some temples/shrines in the area, the main one being Meguro Fudosan.  This was definitely a good part of the tour to NOT have the kids.  Temples and shrines are not their favorite things.

A few random pictures from the temple/shrine portion of the tour:

This Buddha is from 1683
(sorry for the poor light)

Japanese word of the day:  sakura  (click to hear pronunciation) means "cherry blossom"

March 19th - March 30th - Visitors!

Drew's parents and sister (Cory, Bob, and Jen Donnalley, otherwise known as Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Jen) are our first visitors:

The kids greet Grandma at arrival

Cory, Bob, and Jen (probably mostly Jen) are going to be our guest bloggers.
If you see "Jennie" in the posting, that refers to me, Jen Morgan.  I was Jennie when I first met them and Jennie I have stayed, partly because Drew's sister is also named Jen - helps to keep us separate. :) 

And now our guest bloggers -

Here are the highlights of our trip:

What's it like to not speak the language of the country you are in?

On day 3, we had our first taxi trip and when we got into the cab, the driver pointed to this screen and spoke to us in Japanese.  We assume he was asking if this was the correct address so we just nodded, smiled, said yes, and hoped for the best.

How do phone calls go?  Here is a transcript of a call that Andrew made to the bakery to see if they were open.  Most shops don't open until 10 am but Bob wanted fresh bread for breakfast.

Andrew:  Hello, I was just wondering what time you open?

Lots of silence while Andrew is listening

Andrew:  OK.  I'm hanging up now.  [Click]....since I have no idea what you're saying.

We thought it was a successful conversation because we figured if they answered the phone, it meant they were open, and we were right because we headed out and got our bread.

Games

If you know us at all, you know we can't go a day without playing a game.  We'll spare you the scores of every game - we'll just give the highlights.  Cory and Bob had their first Wii experience and an experience it was.  See the video of Bob hula-hooping. Make sure you go to the bathroom first, because this video will make you pee in your pants.

After round one of skiing, Grandma Cory was the top score.  Andrew couldn't take being beaten by an old lady in not only skiing, but in a video game, so he got serious and worked for hours to top her score, which he eventually did.  (Note from Drew: It was the next time that I beat her score.  All I had to do was pay attention.)  

Greer giving Grandma a Wii bowling lesson

Grandma passed on the game of Casino to her grandkids just like
her mom taught it to Jen and  Andrew

In the 6 games of Monopoly, Grandpa won 4 of them which Cooper thinks is 100% unfair.  He wants to know how he keeps winning.

We played many, many games of Boggle, and since Jennie is a wordsmith, she has her own set of rules.  She can only get points for words that have 5 or more letters, and she still wins!  She has passed her skills on to her daughter - Greer crushes us every round.  Pretty sure she is soon going to have to follow the rules that her mom has to follow.  (Note from the editor:  Not only do my 3- and 4- letter words not count, but I get one fewer point per word than they do.) 

Pool - the house came with a pool table so we decided we had to christen the table.  We got the moving boxes out of the room and got ready for game #1.  The game finally had to be called due to the late hour.  Did you know a game of pool could last for hours?  Boy, are we bad!!!

Food 

If you know Bob well (or have ever met him), you know we have to have a section about food.

1) The Little Mermaid - the local bakery was our daily staple.  Not sure how Bob is going to live without his crusty bread.

2)  We can't go 2 weeks without Italian food so we went to a local restaurant called Bacca Bacca which is a five-minute walk from their place.  (Jennie and Andrew were out on a date, so we were on our own.)  No English menu but between some translating that someone from Andrew's office had done for him and the iPhone, we were able to order food.  We loved watching the chef cook up our spaghetti as he stirred it with chopsticks. Jen ended the meal by telling him that the dinner was delicious.  She used the iPhone to come up with the sentence.  The chef gave a big smile and the perfect hand symbol, but we imagine he had no idea what she said but liked that she was trying.

3)  You can't go to Japan and not go to a noodle shop.  Clearly we need to keep practicing with our chopsticks because everyone was tired of eating before they were full.

4)  What's a trip to Japan without a stop off for tempura?

5) We found the kids a burger shack which is only a 5-minute walk from their place.  Cooper said it may have been the best burger he has ever had! 

Top 4 highlights:

1) Visiting the kids school.  Jen went to a couple of classes on Thursday and then we all went for lunch on Friday.  When you step onto the grounds of the American School In Japan (ASIJ), you feel like you have stepped into a school in the US.

2) Cory, Jen, Cooper and Greer were in a taxi on the way home from the noodle shop when the GPS told the taxi driver to go down a one way street the wrong way.  Greer was able to get him home saying straight, left, and right in Japanese.  AMAZING!!!  It was the first time she had to get out of a jam using the Japanese she has been studying.  Her teacher is going to be so proud when she hears about this adventure.

3) Cory took Greer shopping for her x-mas present.  She got 1 pair of shoes, 3 scarves, and a pair of earrings.  Yes, of course shopping has to make a highlight list!

4)  Jennie driving through Tokyo.  Not only do they drive on the left hand side, the street signs are all in Japanese!!  A stop sign isn't even the same - it's an equilateral triangle.  She most definitely gets a power clap for her driving skills.

It was a great trip and we couldn't be happier we made the journey and got the chance to see what their life is like in Japan.

Sayonara until next time,

Cory, Bob & Jen

And one final picture from right before they left: