Okinawa Prison Craft Fair

I saw an advertisement for a craft fair at the Okinawan prison.  I immediately decided that we had to go - who could pass up a trip to a Japanese prison?   The crafts were supposed to be made by the prisoners, which I found really cool.  This was mostly advertised in Japanese with very little information available in English, so we didn't really know what to expect.  When we got there, the craft fair was set up outside the prison and the people selling the crafts, didn't look like prisoners.  Plus, there was a high school symphony that performed, along with a Japanese theatrical group of women.  

So, off we went in search of crafty things.  

This is the group of Japanese performers that I mentioned above.  We didn't stay to see them perform.

Here is the High School Symphony.  They were performing Christmas Carols.

Here is Brock attracting the attention of several Japanese women.  To that point, we were the only Americans that we saw.  I know the base had taken a bus tour their earlier in the day, but they were all gone by the time we got there, so we definitely drew our fair amount of stares.

We ended up with a wooden puzzle for Brock and Reagan picked out some small wind chimes and that was about it.  I sort of kicked myself for not looking at the Bingata paintings closer.  I'll explain Bingata in another post. 

So long Funcargo - I wish I could say its been fun!

If you'll remember, when we got to the island, we purchased this cute little Japanese car called a Funcargo.  Let me tell you, the cuteness wore off real quick.  We ended up hating that car because it was so flimsy.  I don't know how else to describe it because it's doors were super thin, it was loud...we hated it.

Fast forward to a Wednesday night about 2 weeks ago.  We had dropped Reagan off at Girl Scouts and had run to the BX for some last minute Christmas shopping.  Deciding that we didn't have time go home first, we just were going to drive around a bit to kill time before picking Reagan up.  We were at a stop light on base when we were rear ended.  I'm sure that he wasn't even going that fast, but it felt like a major impact in this tiny car.  

So, Brandon is now the proud new owner of a 10 year old Nissan Skyline.  None of the Americans drive new cars here, not even kind of new cars.  Most are at least 10 years old.    I'll try to take pictures of the "new" car and post them later.  

By the way, the damage above totaled the car.  It still drove fine, but the back door wasn't able to be opened.  We decided we didn't feel all that safe in it anymore, especially with the kids.  

Tokyo Day 3

Sorry for the delay in blogging.  I'll be playing catch up with a few posts shortly.  

So, we are on the last day of our Thanksgiving trip to Tokyo.  If you've seen the Tokyo subway map, it looks completely crazy and absolutely impossible to navigate.  Thank God for iPhones and Transit Apps.  We were able to type in where we wanted to go, and it would tell us which trains to take in order to get there...amazing!  Tokyo overall was an easy to navigate city.  Most signs were in English, and if not, then there usually were pictures.  See an example below.  This marking on the sidewalk shows you were to wait before crossing the street.  The thing that intrigued Reagan and I are the way that the shoe marks are painted.

See below - how do you stand like that?  

This picture below is of an elevator.  I know, not that exciting, except for the number of people packed in it.  Elevators were somewhat scarce, and having a stroller, we often times walked what felt like miles out of the way to find the lone elevator in the subway.  I guess because there are so few, that Japanese people just pile in to get where they are going.  We don't operate that way....we like personal space.  The stroller actually bought us space sometimes, but it was comically funny to us how many people would cram in behind us.  We didn't travel the subway during the rush hours (on purpose), but I had read about subway attendants that would stand outside the trains and keep shoving people in until the doors closed.  

Our first stop of the day was the Sensoji Temple

In order to get to the temple, you had to walk the gauntlet of vendors.   It was crowded and not that easy to do with the stroller.

I'm not 100% on what the papers are below, but I think they are people's fortunes for the next year.  People were buying them from a booth, then tying them to the fence.  This was all written in Japanese, so we skipped this. 

 There was a big incense pot, and the smell was strong.  I don't know if it's the Catholic in me, but I really dislike the smell of incense.  

This area was a washing spot for people to wash their hands before going up to the temple.  We were standing by a Japanese lady and I struck up a conversation with her.  It turns out she was there with the Tokyo Olympic 2020 Candidate City committee and they were holding an event shortly with Japanese Olympians present.  She even gave us 4 Tokyo Olympic Candidate City pins, which was very cool.  

A few other shots 

Another view of the incense pot.

After leaving Sensoji, we decided to have lunch at this Ramen place.  It helped that they had the pretend food in the window, but they also had a sign advertising an English menu.  We were ushered to the 2nd floor where there were 3 or 4 small tables and we had our lunch.  

We could see the Tokyo Tower from street, which was cool.  We saw this all lit up when we were coming into the city from the airport the first evening.  

I couldn't resist the picture of the pedicab.

Below is the entrance of the Meiji Shrine.  This was a beautiful walk in the middle of the city into a wooded area.

This explains the photos below of the Sake barrels.

There were a ton of Japanese families at the Shrine having their pictures taken.  I snuck a few photos of them since they were in beautiful kimonos.

 Another family photos - doesn't matter that they aren't my family, does it?

The real treat while we were there was that there was a Japanese wedding going on.  The bride is below.  They proceeded through the center of the shrine and people parted  for them to pass.  It was really neat.

This is their procession through the center.  There was an attendant carrying that huge umbrella over the bride and groom.

Brock is quite the traveler.  Here he is navigating the busy subway like a pro.

 

Tokyo day 2

Friday was a rainy day, so we struggled to find something to do because most of the things on our list were outside activities.  We read that the Sony showroom was right above a metro station and was 6 floors of electronics.  I thought that this would be something that Brandon would enjoy, so after getting a late start, we headed out for Ginza. 

Here's Brock with his rain gear on.   He's in there, I promise.

The sony showroom.  Ideally this would have been great, but Tokyo is not a very stroller/wheelchair accessible city.  Often times in the Metro stations we would find 1 loan elevator clear at the other end of the station.  Many times I just lifted the front of the stroller, while Brandon took the back and we lugged it up and down the steps.  I'm sure they thought we were crazy Americans, but it was a pain in the neck to locate the 1 elevator sometimes.  Anyway, getting back to the Sony Store, we took the elevator to a random floor only to discover that it was broken into little sections with each being 1 step higher or lower than the normal floor.  The place was tiny and hard to maneuver, so we ended up leaving.  

Just a few other pictures of the area.  There were a number of really high-end stores in this part of town - not places we'd normally do our Black Friday shopping at. 

We did go into the Gap.  I know, I know, but seeing a familiar store was a bit like home. 

The main shopping street.  They had the street closed to traffic, which was nice.  

We realized that Ginza was just a stop or two away on the Metro from the Imperial Palace, so we decided to check it out.  It was't raining hard, just a slight drizzle all day.  The Japanese Royal family live at the Imperial Palace in case you are wondering what's the draw.  Here's a picture of the moat around the property.  Very impressive.

This is part of the walkway to the bridge area.

If you look close, way in the background is a white structure on the hill.  That's the palace.

Here it is a little closer.

and closer still....

We are leaving the area, and this is another shot of the moat. 

The moat's wall

As we were walking to our metro stop, we passed the Peninsula Hotel.  I can't remember what kind of car this was, but Brandon was impressed, so we took a photo.

As we were walking back to the metro, we passed under a JR (Japan Rail) track.  We had read about this area in one of our guide books, and were pleasantly surprised to have just stumbled on it.  There were a bunch of tiny restaurants under the tracks.  As you can see in the picture below, that restaurant only has 4 seats.  It wasn't meal time, so it was mostly empty.

A look back under the tracks

Just a couple shots of the Shinjuku area at night.