Mikan Picking with Dad

After our PSNS group got together for a potluck, Tim and William headed off with good friends of ours, the Strands, to go Mikan picking. Mikan, or maybe better known in the US as satsuma, are small, seedless citrus. They are very sweet, and there are groves near to us.
Tim has some advantage in his height, to get the fresh ones at the top.

William's coat came back filthy. He had a lot of fun. Apparently, there's a cover charge to go into the grove and eat all you want.
They give you a basket, and it says ¥400. Well, that's per kilo, not per basket. Well, you live and learn here in Japan!!!
I think the best part of Mikan picking is getting out in the fresh, sunny air that we're experiencing at this time of year! Our fridge is now packed with Mikan that need to be eaten!

Raining Disney In

We have always wanted to go to Disneyland on one of those days the lines are short, and you can ride all the rides your stomach can handle. November 11 is an American holiday, thus Tim had it off. We pulled William out of school, saw the forecast was for rain, made sure we all had raingear and umbrellas, and went to Disneyland.When we got in the car to leave, we were soaked from dashing to the car in the pouring rain. I said, "Tim, are you SURE?" And so we set off. We got there at 9, and there still was a line to get in. This is looking towards the park. They were supposed to be fully decorated for Christmas, but they're running behind.
William and Tim walking towards the park. I should have put boots on William, as his tennis shoes are soaked at this point. And we've only walked from the car parking garage to the front gate, and waited to get in.
Tokyo Disney's downtown and shopping area is covered. No umbrellas were supposed to be up at this point. The big tree was up, however!
But as soon as we stepped out of the covering, we were back in the pouring rain. If you click and look, you can see how big the rain drops were. There was already a line for Monsters, Inc., a new ride here at Tokyo Disney.
So, even though we got there at 9 in the morning, and immediately went to the fast pass, by the time Tim got up there, we got 1:40 tickets.
I loved the Tiki guys all decked out for Christmas. Too fun! We got soaked on our first ride, the rocket ships. Where usually your legs are dry directly under the rain jacket, we had to sit down and lean back, and then the cloud burst happened. We were drenched. So, we went to Splash Mountain next, as we couldn't get any wetter. There was no line, so we rode it a couple times.
We finally got to go in Monsters, Inc. Woo hoo! It's called, 'Ride and Go See,' and you get flashlights. They don't do anything special, but your flashlight makes a character on the wall.
But, after about the second turn in, our cars STOPPED. Broke down! NOOooooo... We got to wait for them to show up with a step-ladder and escort us out.
We were stuck in front of this guy. Normally, Boo pops out from one of these containers. We just got to watch him deflate a bit. They gave us special passes to get back in, as soon as the ride was fixed. So, we got to see the rest of the story. Tim loved the trash compactor the best.

We rode so many rides over and over, that Tim's stomach stopped being able to do Space Mountain (I didn't even go, I know better). William was the roller coaster monster. We rode Thunder Mountain as many times as we could. That one never went below 15 minutes wait, but that isn't bad at all!

We ended up staying for the fireworks, and the rain became light enough a few times to not put up umbrellas as we dashed to the next ride. It was a great day, and we got our fill of Disney rides!

Rites of Passage

To be 6 in Japan is to be someone.

One of the things that happens when you're 6, is that you have to start paying to ride the trains. It's only 1/2 price (I've noticed that it rounds up to the nearest 10 yen/cents... so, if the fare was ¥170 for me, it is ¥90 for William), but now you have to pay.

I found it a bit amusing that they made us bring ID for him before they'd issue a PASMO card. It's a debit card system (there's also the SUICA card system) for riding trains, getting sodas, and taxi fares. What? I'm telling you my kid needs to pay, and he's obviously not an adult, issue me the card! So, when Tim and William went to the Ueno Museum, they took William's passport, and got him a PASMO card.

If you can read the Katakana on this card, you'll notice they mis-spelled Putaansuu. We're used to that in English, so it's no surprise the Japanese have the same issue. They have all the correct sounds to correctly say it, at least. The PASMO card is issued to a particular child. That makes sense, as you don't want adults getting a card and swindling the system by only paying half-fare to get through the ticket wickets. Yes, they're called wickets.

William loves trains, and I noticed this was something Tim and he saw the day they went to the Ueno museum.

That little 'purse' around his neck is a custom-made Shinkansen coin purse to hold his PASMO card, some cash for emergencies, and I'll bet you'd find some other flotsam in there.

When we needed something like this, the stores had nothing. So, I found a cloth zipped bag, bought a shinkansen patch and some shinkansen clips, hand-sewed them on, and viola. And then I bought a break-away neck lanyard. Total cost: ¥700. Bleeding fingers, priceless...

Sure enough, about 2 weeks after I made it, they had the perfect little train money purses on strings at the ¥100 store. Grrrr. At least we know which 'kurse' (kid purse) is his!

Another milestone for us was him learning to tie his own shoes.

I'd seen somewhere that it helps to make the laces 2 different colors when learning to tie shoes. It helps them not get confused on which goes under or over, etc. So, I got some laces and made our own tying trainer. Tim showed him how to tie on it, and he aced it in a few hours. It's nice, because he can now tie his own shoes. Woo hoo!

I've been trying to upload the video for 8 hours. I give up. Trust me, the boy knows how to tie a shoe! :)

China Days 5 & 6

Our last full day in China was a bit more relaxed. We got back on the overnight train and were picked up by the tour guide and driver and driven back to our hotel. We ate breakfast, checked in, showered, and collapsed. The overnight train is a great way to get to a location while getting a night's sleep, but we also felt like we'd been on the move for 3 days straight. William and I needed a break from the travel and Caroline wanted to try her hand in the markets. So, there isn't much to report for most of the day. For dinner, though, we had one check-mark left on Caroline's list. Peking Duck! Caroline had the name and address of the best Peking Duck restaurant in Beijing and it happened to be a mere block away.

There are some nice blocks in the neighborhood. This French styled hotel was an eye catching landmark that we used to know that we were getting close to our hotel in a taxi.

The restaurant was just across the street in this mall. I was feeling a bit underdressed as we walked past the GUCCI store...

It is a very nice restaurant with quite a bit of style. The duck kitchen is in the middle of the restaurant in the middle of a goldfish filled moat. As we waited for our number to be called, we watched them cook ducks in the wood fired ovens. They'd pull them out with a long hook and then several of them would look it over and tap on it to see if it was the perfect golden crispiness before being taken away by certified duck chefs to be artfully carved up at your table.

Not knowing much about Peking Duck, I was kind of worried that I'd have a fully intact, but cooked, duck on my plate that I'd need to figure out how to eat (do I eat this part?!) But they carve off the really tasty portions and take the rest away. You get two of these plates full of duck meat with the crispy gold skin. The waitress took pity on us and gave us a lesson on how to eat it. First off was taking a strip of the duck skin carved from the back (that you see laying on top) dipped it in sugar and placed it on our plates. We used our chop sticks to stick them in our mouths and quickly understood the draw of Peking Duck. Sandy, you would love this. It is the developed and perfected end game version of snacking on the fried chicken skin stuck to the bottom of the pan! Mmmmm!

Most of the rest you place on thin unleavened bread they provide...

Add a few condiments they provide, wrap it up in an open faced burrito, and eat. It was VERY GOOD. A nice ending to our China vacation.

The next morning we had some adventures getting to our flight. They had recommended getting to the airport three hours ahead of our flight. I set the alarm on my iPod for 4:30 to facilitate that and then woke up at 6:03 to find that I never un-muted the external speaker on my iPod. Poor start! We scrambled to shower, dress, pack and head to the airport in a cab. As we are getting into the cab, the door man and the taxi driver are asking us which terminal we're going to. Our paperwork didn't say and they couldn't find Northwest on the list, so we agreed that we'd go to one and look and if it wasn't that one, we'd go to the next. The cab took a little extra time since he was avoiding tolls and when he pulled up to the first terminal, he was already closing out the ride and printing the receipt. We were on our own!

It was a beautiful airport terminal. But, of course, it was the wrong one. So...

We caught the shuttle bus that took an honest 20 minutes to get to the correct terminal. I almost think we drove to a completely different airport! We got to the terminal and through the check-point, check-in, immigration, and all they way to our gate with 10 minutes to spare before boarding. Whew!

Some of William's video showing the Peking Duck restaurant

China Day 4: Xi'an

After we woke up, dressed, and disembarked the overnight train, we headed into the unknown world of Xi'an and found "Waldner" waiting for us...
It was nice to find our guide so easily. Waldner decided his Western name would be named after the Swedish table tennis player Jan-Ove Waldner. As we worked our way through crowds Caroline and I would ask, "Where's Waldner?"

Once again, the traveling is often as interesting as the site we are going to. These three wheeled trucks were cool. I'd seen three wheeled cars before, but a truck?! Carrying a tree no less.

Our first stop of the day was the Xi'an inner city wall. It's quite well preserved and maintained, so it is quite a site to see how the ancient capital city (at the time) defended itself. They really play up the site with decorations and costumed guards.

This is the view from on top of the wall. It's amazing how wide it is. The walls I'd seen in Europe were easily a third to a quarter as thick. This thing was massive. They had bastions sticking out of the wall at every 120 meters figuring archers could shoot 60 meters, so could hit anyone trying to climb up the wall from the side.

This was apparently the Test Shrine. It is where people went for some type of test... Not sure what kind.

You can rent bikes to ride on the wall. The wall goes all around the city center, so you can ride the bikes all the way around. As far as I could tell, each section of wall looked a lot like others, so we didn't ride the bikes.

The exterior of the wall. Yep, I'd hate to try to scale that wall...

The called this the fish-barrel. It is one of the gates into the city. The visitors would be let into this courtyard where you could be trapped in and shot at from all the surrounding walls. Now, it's a parking lot for the tour busses.

Our next stop was another state run craft shop. This time, it was a shop that makes Terracotta Warriors. Or, at least, souvenir versions of all sizes. We actually bought three smaller ones. They offered to ship the life sized ones, but where do you keep such a thing? They had headless warriors for taking pictures with. William doesn't need the silly costume!

The Terracotta Army is protected by a large enclosure. This is pit #1 and there are a total of 3 pits. The other two are much smaller. The army was discovered in 1973 by three farmers digging a well. They aren't farmers anymore. Only one is left and he signs books in the visitors center. They say that none of them could write at the time, but is now very good at signing his name...

It's hard to get a good close look of the ones in the pit. You view them from above and a ways away.

Still fascinating to see them all lined up.

A great deal of the place has yet to be excavated. Here, they are working to uncover the next area of warriors.

The whole site had been demolished and burned by a peasant uprising not long after it was built. So almost all of the army was found in this condition and had to be put back together.

I didn't realize that the warriors were originally painted to look life like. The paint would be present when uncovered, but fall off soon afterwards. Only the pictures record the color they had when uncovered. Little creepy if you ask me.

This is the Terracotta Army Hospital. It's where they reassemble the warriors as they recover the parts.

These guys were hiding behind a blue tarp. Guess they didn't count on tall, long armed people sneaking a shot over the tarp... It looks like they are using a turntable, lighting, and cameras to record the details of all sides of the completed warriors.

They also had some of the better examples on display where we could actually see them up close. They were an amazing site to see.

China Day 3: Temple of Heaven

After a couple of fast paced tour days, we decided to take it a bit slower. We took a leisurely morning to relax. There happened to be a History Channel special on the building of the Great Wall of China. Since we'd just seen it the other day, it seemed quite interesting and we hung around and watched it. As it got closer to lunch, we packed our bags and checked out of our room since we'd be sleeping on the train to Xi'an that night.

We'd been having mixed luck with the restaurant in the hotel. They had wonderful food, but they didn't have a children's portion to the menu and when we tried to special order things like "Fried Chicken" we got this very nice Wok fried chicken and vegetable dish spiced heavily with Ginger. Not exactly kid stuff and William wasn't impressed. Today, we elected not to eat at the hotel, but venture out toward the Temple of Heaven and find something to eat that William might like. We were living on the edge! As we got out of the cab and looked around, we spotted...

A KFC! It's a restaurant that is William and Dad approved! We've been dabbling in Chinese food for three days to this point. We needed something familiar.

The Temple of Heaven was a much more relaxed site to see than the ones we'd seen so far. It might be that we were finely into the work week and the crowds were less, but it also was the park like setting of the whole place. It was as full of trees and flowers and neatly groomed as any great city park, but with stunning Chinese temples and palaces spread around in the different places.

It was just a very relaxed place. Most everyone we saw there was sitting back and relaxing, talking, or playing games. I almost felt silly pointing the camera around like a madman trying to capture it all.

Honestly, they were playing games.

We rented an audio tour device for William. We've found that he stays far more engaged with the site seeing (and isn't running around and rolling his Thomas train on everything), if he has one of these things and he is pretty good at telling us the highlights from the recording. We do get some odd looks when we get just one and we give it to the six year old, but it works for us.

Once again, William is the center of attention most everywhere he goes and he is still happily posing for pictures with completely foreign strangers.

The glazed tile roofs are intricate and marvelous.

Whenever William would get close to a new site of interest, his audio tour would start talking about the item. He'd pipe up with, "It's talking again!"

The weather was really good on this day. As you could see from the previous day's pictures, it is usually quite hazy in Beijing and even in the Forbidden City, the buildings just across the courtyard were in the haze. On this day, it had totally cleared out and you could see out across the city without any haze. Wow!

Thomas made the rounds in the Temple of Heaven too.

We'd seen what looked like a playground along the entrance to the park. William had wanted to play, but we convinced him to do some site seeing first and then do the playground later. We had such a wonderful time in the park, that we'd forgotten about it until we were exiting. We headed over and were a bit startled with what we found. It wasn't a children's playground, but rather a grown-up's work-out area. William still found some things to play on, but Caroline and I were just amazed with the set-up and even more amazed at how many Chinese were out there really using them.

After the park, we headed back to the hotel for dinner. Oddly enough, they figured out that they did have a children's menu. It just took a little extra prodding and asking. Then, we were picked up and taken to the train station where we boarded our sleeper car on our overnight train and spent the night snoozing as we traveled to Xi'an some 600 miles away. William, who loves trains, proclaimed this as the BEST day of his LIFE!

In the morning, we disembark to go see the Xi'an city wall and the famous Tera Cotta Warriors!

Some sites around the Temple of Heaven including people playing cards and people playing hackie sac with an odd shuttle cock type device. William received one from one an Army guy that was relaxing in the park. Later, we are driving to the train station and passing Tiananmen Square and then finally getting on the train.