Jan. 21, 2012 - First birthday in Tokyo

We got to sleep in this particular Saturday, probably in honor of my birthday.  We didn't have to leave the house at 6:30 to take the train to the swim meet because ASIJ ran buses for the Saturday activities.  This was something new ASIJ had started in the fall when they were building a new parking structure on campus.  While construction was ongoing, parking on campus was very limited, so they ran buses on Saturday, which was also great for the people without cars.  Well, the structure was finished by the time school started back up in January, so they discontinued the Saturday buses.  However, I guess the buses were a hit, both for those with cars and those without.  After hearing from the parents, the administration brought back the buses for this Saturday.  I don't know if they'll continue them (because it is an extra expense for the school), but we'll be using them for now.

They have many fewer bus stops for the Saturday buses, and ours is Yoyogi Hachiman, which is a subway stop on the Odakyu line.  Google maps will tell you Yoyogi Hachiman is a 10-minute walk from our apartment, but I'm not sure how they determine that.  Maybe using an 8-foot tall person who walks at a very fast clip.  They definitely aren't using a family of four which includes two children who are constitutionally incapable of walking faster than a stroll and two parents who are constantly checking the map on their iPhones.  I had emailed the transportation director to ask if the Yoyogi Hachiman ASIJ bus stop was directly in front of the Yoyogi Hachiman subway stop.  Good thing I wasn't depending on her answer.  I didn't hear back from her, but we were on the lookout for groups of people that looked like they might be waiting for a school bus.  We saw a likely group of what looked to be high school girls and asked.  Yes, they were waiting for the bus.  Lucky for us that we saw them since the bus stop turned out to be down a road, up some stairs, and across another road from the subway station.  No way would we have even seen the bus if we'd been waiting where we thought we should.

The snow that looked so pretty falling yesterday (though not so pretty when it was time to walk to the grocery store) looked even less pretty today.  Today it was a freezing rain, making for a less than pleasant walk to the bus stop.  No matter, I'm sure the day will improve.  That is, it will improve once the swim meet is over.  Last week, I mentioned that the swim meet was just a middle school meet.  This week, it was both high school and middle school, dramatically lengthening the duration of the meet.  Instead of three individual events and two relay events, this week Greer swam on three relay teams: the 200m medley, the 200m freestyle, and the 400m freestyle, and her individual events were the 50m free and the 100m free.  This week she had a LOT of rest time between her events since the meet was more than twice as long as the previous week. 

Once the meet finally ended midafternoon, we had a half hour wait for the return buses.  This gave us time to revisit our plan for the rest of the day.  We had planned to go to Shibuya to do some shopping, followed by dinner at Outback for my birthday.  However, the freezing rain was still falling, which made walking around Shibuya seem like an undesirable thing to do.  Change in plans: after we got off the bus, the kids and I headed back to the apartment while Andrew stopped by the grocery store.  He cooked a great birthday dinner (stir fry, which I seem to only get on my birthday and Mother's Day, and not always then).  While he was at the store, the kids asked me not to come into the kitchen and they made chocolate-covered strawberries.  They even managed to decorate the serving platter with chocolate shavings (though we didn't think to take the picture until after we'd already served the strawberries).     

Japanese word of the day:  tanjoubi  (click to hear pronunciation) means "birthday"