Tokyo

This may be the longest post ever! I took so many pictures in Tokyo, and just finished going through all of them. I narrowed it down to these 100 or so.=)

We left on the Friday night before Christmas. The kids were so psyched to get on an airplane. Noah had a few episodes where he panicked, but that was all. We stayed by the Tokyo airport that night in this pretty tiny hotel room:

We had to pack super light because on our first day (Saturday), we didn't want to ride the 2 hours in the train to our hotel in Atsugi (the Navy Base we were staying at) and then back again, so we used that day to see the Tokyo Skytree which was near the airport hotel we stayed at. We lugged our two backpacks, camera, and stroller around that day. The first thing that us and the kids noticed was the cold weather! It was in the 40's the whole time we were there, but it sure felt cold to us. Okinawa rarely even gets down to the 50's in the winter. Here we are on the train. We took a lot of buses, trains, cabs, and planes on our trip.

Going up to see the Tokyo Skytree

Lots of shopping everywhere, but nothing stuck out to us really. We only came home with some loose leaf tea that we will give as a gift.

It's the 2nd largest tower in the world.

The kids loved this huge display of Tokyo. The cars, boats, and people moved.

Avery at the base of the skytree

Now we're at the top!

Another display that had moving things and the lighting changed to show the day going by.

The only cloudy day of our trip happened to be this day. We weren't able to see anything too far away, but it was still cool.

Riding on the train to Atsugi to find our hotel.

The walk from the train station to Atsugi reminded us of a fall day in Ohio.

I'm glad I made the kiddos hats (Noah a gorilla and Avery a pink Hello Kitty). They needed them. Temperatures in the 40's felt like freezing to us.

Their favorite part of the hotel: the bathtub! (we don't have a bathtub at our house) and the cable TV. Steve and I enjoyed how much bigger the room was compared to the room by the airport we stayed at the night before.

The next morning (Sunday) - walking to the bus station to go to Kamakura, which is a pretty historic town outside of Tokyo.

Lots of forest - much different landscape than what's on our island.

Random pictures of us walking down the main street. It was so pretty. Lots of food and shopping.

Made a latte pit stop (mainly just to warm up!) - only 800 yen each! (which is like $10 - so expensive! but it was good)

Avery likes to make the peace sign. She got that from her Japanese friends at her old preschool.

At the end of the main street sat the biggest and oldest temple in the town.

Walking trails.

We got back on the train to go see a giant Buddha, but.....we had run out of yen (forgot to get enough in Atsugi and figured there would be an exchange place somewhere. There wasn't. Anyway, we didn't have enough yen to see the Buddha let alone enough to get back to the hotel! Thankfully, the train station took credit cards, so we could use the tiny bit of yen we had left for the bus ride. Lesson learned! And, unfortunately, that's not the last lesson we learned on this trip...

Next morning (Monday) we our armed with happy kids and plenty of yen as we head to Tokyo Disney! It was sunny and beautiful and Avery was just in awe of everything. There were holiday decorations everywhere. It was pretty much exactly the same as Disney Land in California.

I'm glad we grabbed these bunnies when we did. It was the only character they got a picture with. Oh well!

Funny story on the tea cups....everyone starts off happy....

Steve spins in faster....Noah is not so sure now...

Noah is terrified now, and Avery isn't even too sure about how fast we're going....lol But then Avery ended up loving it, and Steve finally slowed us down.

It's a Small World was decked out in Christmas decorations.

We rode about 5 or 6 things....then we just got cold. Like, really cold. Even though it was sunny it was definately the coldest day we were there. We had to leave. I wish we could of stayed to see the Christmas light show, but it wasn't worth being miserable.

Look who we found on the train station on our way back home (it was Christmas Eve after all).

The first American store I've seen in awhile:

Then when we got back to the hotel, look who was there! Needless to say, Noah isn't scared of Santa this year.

Pulling his beard.

The next day was Christmas and the day we were suppose to leave. Here we are lounging in the hotel with no real hurry of leaving....

Lesson #2 learned....when you're in Tokyo, allow more than 2 1/2 hours to get to the airport! When we left we weren't able to get a cab to the train station, so we had to walk for about 40 minutes which set us back. And even though Steve was absolutely amazing at navigating the super confusing train systems (I didn't have a clue...it was so confusing), we weren't able to get to the airport fast enough. A mistake the cost us over $900 because we had to re buy our tickets for the next day. This will NOT happen again...=( After we (I) pouted for a bit, we decided to walk around downtown Tokyo a bit since we were right there. The city is just enormous. It's very clean and pristine. Much different then the laid back approach of Okinawa.

Coffee and hot chocolate break.

We were going to go see the Emperor's Palace, but the grounds were closed. It's the most expensive peace of real estate in the world.

The next morning (which was our anniversary!) we got a much earlier start to the airport.

And we made it! The kids were great on the flight. Noah preferred the Ipad, while Avery enjoyed looking out the window.