Tokyo and the Penis Festival in Kawasaki

Since we had already seen the great view of Mount Fuji, we decided to forego our original plans (another view of the mountain) due to the weather. We ended up being really lucky that we arrived so early the afternoon before - we could barely even see the mountain that morning (there was a view from the hostel). We felt bad for all the others there who weren't going to be able to see it properly - it's a very long way to come and not see Mount Fuji.

Anyway, we left around noon and had lunch at one of the train stations where we switched trains. There was this great, tiny ramen shop, exactly the type we love: You put your money in a machine, select what you want, get a ticket, and come to the counter. Within 4 minutes you have your food, and it is way healthier than any fast food we can get back home!

We arrived in Tokyo fairly early, but we were pretty beat from the long way there. Our hotel is really nice, but it just confirms our opinions that hostels are a million times better than hotels. They are just so much homier, it's great fun getting to know other people and hear about their travels, and there is loads of advice plastered all over the walls, not to mention the great staff that is really knowledgeable about the area.

Our hotel is located in a great place, just two stops from Tokyo Station (think Grand Central Station, but tons bigger and way more confusing, and not because of the Japanese). As it turns out, this area is the #1 spot in Tokyo for books, and the Klein Perez family loves books, so we just walked a bit among the shops and just had a lot of calm fun. It was raining and too late to really see anything, plus we had spent a lot of time in Tokyo on our last trip, so there wasn't anything major we still wanted to see.

The next morning, it was supposed to rain, so we split up to keep Sophie dry: Rony took her to this amazing indoor playground for kids, called Children's Palace) where she had an amazing time. Ordinarily, Talia would have given up the camera so that Rony could take pics of Sophie playing, however she went to the Penis Festival in Kawasaki, and if you don't have a pictures, it didn't happen.

You read right. The Festival of the Steel Phallus, to be precise. It's one of the last remaining fertility festivals in Japan. It's located in Kawasaki, about 25 minutes outside of Tokyo. The festival is actually a lot smaller than we expected it to be, but it was definitely worth the trip for Talia (and definitely not for Rony and Sophie).

Right when you arrive at the shrine (yeah, the festival takes place at a place of worship, which, by the way, also has a kindergarden), you are greeted by this nice guy:

 They have all kinds of stands there, selling penis whistles and bandanas with reproductive organs on them, and also carving competitions:

Best of all, tons of candy! Really expensive candy, which originally I wanted to buy for work, but it was way too expensive.

 Then the parade began, and Talia had a great spot. This was her favorite float, because it's lead by some really awesome and really creepy-looking ladies.

After the festival, Talia returned to the hotel to find Sophie and Rony trying to sleep. 15 minutes later, having given up, we all went to the Imperial Palace gardens, located fairly close to our hotel.

The palace itself is not only closed to the public, but can't be viewed, but the park itself is gorgeous, and this is a famous bridge:

We saw Israelis there, so we pretended not to understand, as usual. Someone overheard us talking, though, and she apparently spied on us, but we did not surrender any information!

Exhausted from so much activity that day, we made our way back to the hotel and decided to splurge on some nice, homemade McDonald's! As Rony and Sophie waited for Talia to arrive, Sophie received yet another gift - one of the McDonald's Happy Meals toys! Boy, have we been getting a lot of gifts!

We all fainted into bed, and the following morning, Talia took Sophie to the Children's (petting) Zoo and Rony went book shopping for himself. Or, at least, the plan was to go to the Children's Zoo, but as know on this trip, any correlation between our plans and what happens is purely coincidental.

Sophie fell asleep literally after we got off the Subway, so we sat in the park outside the zoo to let her sleep (a tired baby is an annoying baby, you can quote us on that one). Outside the zoo was a really great playground, and when Sophie woke up, her eyes shot open in so many directions so quickly that Talia thought they would seriously come out of their sockets.

As it turns out, the Children's Zoo was closed that day, but the playground itself was really fun, and Sophie was just going crazy on all the different contraptions. "This! This!" So Talia would take her there after literally three seconds, she would shriek and then point in a different direction, "This! This!" It was tons of fun, but incredibly exhausting.

After the playground, we went shopping! We went to the famous 100 Yen Store, Daiso, near Harajuku station, which is 3 floors of awesome, and then walked up and down Omotesando searching for awesome presents for our families, of which we found none. However, we did make it to Kiddie Town, a 6 (!!!) floor toy store that had an AnPanMan doll, which Sophie loves, and that alone made it worth it. She plays with it all the time! There is an entire floor dedicated to Hello Kitty and one for Snoopy, and boy, is that place incredible.

Our next and final stop that afternoon was a kids store where we bought Sophie her first pair of shoes. She's been wanting to walk a lot here, and the leather soft-sole shoes weren't cutting it anymore. We also replaced a couple items that we lost along the way. :-)

Here are the pictures from our first couple of days in Tokyo: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152718156235364.1073741836.906005363&type=1#!/media/set/?set=a.10152716081785364.1073741835.906005363&type=3

The Ramen Museum in Yokohama and Mount Fuji!

We left Osaka and our amazing hostel behind to finally see Mount Fuji! We only saw it on the train last time, and Talia didn't even get to see THAT because she had fallen asleep! Sophie spent the rest of the time flirting with everyone on the train. Of course, pictures were taken, and an older couple on one of the trains gave her cookies, as well.

Since it is a very long way (about 6 hours all together), we decided to stop halfway through in Yokohama and go to the Ramen Museum! The museum tells the history of ramen in a language we don't understand (Japanese, yo), but downstairs is where the action REALLY happens.

The bottom 2 floors are a reconstruction of Tokyo in 1958, which is when instant ramen was invented. The streets are narrow, there are games that were played on the street back then, and there are so many tiny touches there that made it so much fun. And, of course, the place is FILLED with ramen restaurants, which we ate at.

DELICIOUS.

We then took a few more trains to get to our town by Mount Fuji, and mercilessly, Sophie slept almost the entire way. SCORE!

We arrived easily at our hostel, and Talia saw a gorgeous postcard of Mount Fuji at the reception, and it turned out that the exact spot is only a 20 minute walk from our hostel!

Luckily, the girl working at the hostel told us that there are steps to go up, so Rony loaded Sophie up on the carrier and off we went. What she DIDN'T tell us is that it was a 20 minute walk to get there, but a 400-stair climb to get up after that!

It was exhausting and we seriously don't know how we made it, especially Rony with Sophie on his back, but we did, and boy, was it worth it!

Pictures from Yokohama and Mount Fuji: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152705771380364.1073741833.906005363

Osaka days 2 and 3 - The Science Museum, Universal Studios Japan, The Osaka Castle, Sakuranomyia, and Horyuji Temple

We started our second full day in Osaka at the science museum, which is such an amazing place for kids! First of all, it is free for kids up to the age of 15!

The best part is that you can touch EVERYTHING and there are a lot of activities there, so Sophie had a great time pushing buttons, turning things, and just climbing on everything. Yes, sir - we are introducing our girl to science as early as possible!

After the museum, we headed out to Universal Studios Japan! The place is really nice and the rides are tons of fun, but the kids are on their spring break, so the place was FULL and the lines were insanely long.

At one point, we searched for a place to eat at the park and found a great restaurant, smack-dab in the middle of the park, that had sound-proof windows, and it was divine. No, we are NOT old!!

Rony's soup came with STARS in it, and when the dessert came, the waitress came to Sophie with the cheesecake and drew a picture of Elmo on the plate!

After dinner, we walked around a bit more, and then we split up - Rony took Sophie back to the hostel and Talia stayed at the park until it closed at 9 so she could ride the rides she didn't have the opportunity to do before. Best. Husband. Ever.

While this post makes it seems short, we did SO much walking that day, and we were so exhausted when we got back that we couldn't even fall asleep!

The following morning, we headed out to Osaka Castle to see the Sakura. Everything is so beautiful! We took so many pictures, and it's really hard to decide which angle is best, so we just kept walking around. We then walked over to Sakuranomyia, which is another area really loaded with cherry and peach trees in full blossom, and it was just tons of fun to walk around.

Our next stop, after lunch, was about an hour outside of Osaka in a town named Horyuji, where Sophie received a pinwheel from a lady at Tourist Information. This town has the oldest Buddhist temple in Japan, dating back to at LEAST 711! We had planned about half an hour there and then we were going to proceed to Nara, but we didn't realize how huge the place was and we never actually made it to Nara (which we didn't get to really see last time either.)

As we were about to enter the temple area, a man approached us and introduced himself as a Goodwill Guide. Talia had read at our hostel that there are these guides who, for fun and for free, give tours of major tourist locations, and this was one of them. He took us around the temple grounds and gave us really interesting information that we wouldn't have known otherwise. For example, the big communications tower in Tokyo, which was being built when we were in Tokyo 2 years ago, was built in an earthquake-resistant way that was based on the pagoda at the Horyuji Temple!

Since we didn't have time to go to Nara (again!), we decided to go back to Tokyo and decide there what we wanted to do, but we were BEAT when we got in and Sophie had to practically put US to bed.

Here are our pictures from these two days: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152705721865364.1073741832.906005363&type=3

Okayama and Osaka day one: The famous Osaka aquarium, an awesome streetshow, Americamura, and Dotonbori

We left Kei's house first thing in the morning, and immediately Sophie made friends with yet another small kid who ended up giving her one of his toys as a present, a finger puppet from a famous cartoon in Japan, Anpanman.

We had a 3-hour train ride to Okayama, most of which we all spent sleeping (score!) We had been to the famous Okayama gardens on our last trip, and it was beautiful, but we knew it would be stunning this time because of the sakura, which it was.

We walked back to the train station, because we just love walking through Japan! There are very few days that we don't express (to each other) how much we love this country. We took a direct train to Osaka and located our hostel, J-Hoppers, in the Fukushima area (not where the tsunami hit, it's a neighborhood in Osaka).

The area is GORGEOUS, a narrow street with a bunch of restaurants and, apparently, this is the "hip place for young people" - or that's what was written on a local map. :-)

The hostel itself is great - the staff is awesome and the room is really big for a hostel - no small thing when you are traveling with a baby. There is even a bathtub here (score!) though Sophie keeps crying in it. The bed is comfortable, and Sophie still subscribes to the 80-20 rule: She gets 80% of the bed, and we get 20%.

She kicks us a lot at night, but we don't mind - we just turn our backs AND PRETEND IT IS A FREE THAI MASSAGE. Are you jealous yet?

By the time we got in, it was time for dinner and sleep (for Sophie), and we got ourselves some delicious food for a stupid price at the 7-Eleven 2 buildings down.

The next morning, we started our day at the Osaka aquarium since it was raining, though we had planned it anyway. Sophie LOVES animals (and, really, any nature), and the Osaka aquarium is apparently #2 in the world - and we can see why!

Even though it was drizzling, there was an AMAZING street show going on outside. While we don't generally stop to watch people juggling, this guy was HILARIOUS. We didn't understand a single word he was saying, but we couldn't stop laughing - it was like watching a dubbed samurai movie! You can watch the video here: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rRbi75-0P0I.

The aquarium itself was spectacular - they built it in a way that you don't feel like you are watching fish in a tank, but in their natural habitat.

And Sophie went BALLISTIC. She wouldn't stop laughing and shrieking with joy, and even pushing other people out of the way so she could see more. About an hour or so in, she lay her head on a chair and fell asleep 2 minutes later on Rony.

We then went to have some lunch at the mall next door, and ended up at an all-you-can-eat BBQ place that was sooooooo delicious! You take any meat or veggie you'd like, dip it in tempura, and into the oil it goes! Wow, that place was awesome.

Our next stop was Americamura and Dotonbori, two areas that are great for people-watching. Talia bought some bento gear at the 100 Yen shop (like a $1 store) and we really enjoyed just looking around and seeing all the random and nifty shops all around - they even have a whole booth dedicated solely to clothes for dogs!

Here are the pics we took from these 2 days - we are clearly taking less pictures than before :-) https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152703332520364.1073741831.906005363&type=3

Fukuoka and Yawatahama - We are home!

As we mentioned, we were incredibly sad to be leaving South Korea, but at least our vacation wasn't over! We arrived at the airport and were excited to discover that the Koreans just keep on being awesome until you leave!

As we walked towards the check-in counters, we passed a phone-charging station (!!!) and an airport representative informed us that we don't need to wait in line because there is a special check-in for families (!!!)

We checked in, breezed through security, and walked towards the gate where were awesomely surprised to discover a playground! As we waited, Sophie got to slide and play. Of course, this meant that she cried when we had to board the plane, but so did the rest of the kids, so whew.

We had the same great service on the plane - a trash bag, box of tissues, and a small game - and arrived quickly in Fukuoka, Japan. As in Korea, we were removed from the line and passed through customs quickly, got our luggage, and went to the hotel where we had HEATED TOILETS. We are back in Japan!!!

Since Fukuoka was just a pass-through town for us, we hadn't made any plans, but we walked over to the main shopping district - Watanabe-dori - anyway and were really surpised to see all the action. Tourist Information told us where the sakura (blooming of the cherry blossom) is, and we headed in that direction and had a delicious dinner, where we learned Sophie was just as popular in Japan as in Korea.

One really awesome thing about Fukuoka is that during the day, the sidewalks are empty, but at 6:30 pm, minivans suddenly drive up onto the sidewalk, and dozens of Yatai - mini-restaurants - pop up! They mostly serve yakitori - food on a stick - and they have 2 benches or about 8 chairs for guests to eat.

After a good night's sleep (hahahaha, who are we kidding, we haven't slept in 13 months), we headed over to Beppu, where we did nothing, and boarded a ferry to visit our friend, Kei, from our last trip to Japan.

The ferry ride was fairly uneventful, though lots of fun. Sophie made new friends, as usual, who played with her, and we bought bento for lunch! She definitely wore Rony out by running up and down the stairs ( well, up, Rony had to take her down), and expressed an intense desire for 2 men's beers.

Kei picked us up from the ferry (which was awesome) and took us to see the sakura at a park nearby. The Sakura is the best time of the year to visit Japan, and we missed it by a few weeks last time. This time we came JUST in time! It is only a few weeks long and started early this year, so we are very lucky.

Traditionally, families have picnics under the trees, and older people congregate and just have beer (apparently you are supposed to get drunk). Apparently we were quite the spectacle - not only do we have a kawaii (cute) baby, but this town NEVER sees non-Japanese people, somwe were offered beers (Sophie REALLY wanted one) and snacks, and we sat there for a while since it was really nice outside.

We arrived at Kei's apartment where Sophie was greeted by her pug, Anzu, and it was love at first sight - for both! Anzu had never seen a baby before and quickly became her watchdog, which is hilarious considering she's even smaller than Sophie!

Kei organized a really nice do-it-yourself sushi bar for us for dinner and had invited some friends, a few of whom we had met last time, so it was really like coming home for us to a place we knew and people we had met.

The visit was entirely too short. Kei worked most of the next day, and we took it easy - did some shopping, walked around, and ate, and Talia bought some bento supplies for 100 Yen each (about $1), so she is very happy.

The following morning, we left Yawataham early to make our way to Osaka, where we will be spending the next few days. Kei was awesome and brought us a bag of goodies for thelong train ride ahead, including an Anpanman toy for Sophie, which she really loves playing with. She remembered that Talia likes sparkling water and that Rony loves the Meiji chocolate-covered chocolates, and made sure both were in the package.

Sophie updates:

1) She hates sticky rice. This is the first food we have seen her consistantly spit out.
2) she learned how to drink from a straw. It works 3 out of 4 times. Good statistics, but the 4th time is brutal and the drinks ends up everywhere.
3) She has gotten used to the attention, so when she doesn't have groups of people around her, she gets angry and starts acting cute ON PURPOSE, hoping for a reaction from the crowd (it usually works).
4) She drinks real milk now, not formula. We keep it to a bottle in the morning and a bottle in the evening.

Sorry we take a while to update - on the last trip, we would write on the trains,,and that isn't an option right now. :-)

Pics from Fukuoka and Yawatahama: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152695105270364.1073741828.906005363&type=3