A Trip to Japan - Tokyo Day Two

We all got up somewhere between 3:00a and 4:30a. Since the time difference is effecitvely8 hours, this was like trying to sleep in until noon. We headed out to find some sort of breakfast which was difficult since it was about 7:00a and many places weren't open yet. We walked towards one of the train stations near our hotel and came across a bike parking lot. Nothing to lock to but you could lock your bike to itself since there was an attendant there full time. I had thought Japan had problems finding workers but there were people directing you everywhere, even at the bottom of a bike bridge over a road

We eventually decided that our destination was going to be the local 7-11. One of our goals for our trip was to visit one anyways since we had heard they are very different from Canada with fresh food and drinks. I wouldn't say it was drastically different but there was definitely lots of food options. I got a yogurt parfait and others had everything from tea to fruit sandwiches. It was a good way to start the day. At this point we had confirmed what people have said about the cleanliness of Japan. Our trip took us under the transit line through some bike paths and we didn't see any garbage. After having been here a few days now, simple things like people not eating while walking and no garbage cans so you have a social expectation of carrying your garbage with you seem to make a big difference. I find the first rule a bit irritating because I find it saves time to eat on the go but it definitely makes it easier to keep things clean with no one dropping ice cream and cigarette butts on the sidewalk. 

Once we were done breakfast we hopped on the train near our hotel which was very easy. The local transit pass can quickly be added to your Apple Wallet on your phone and you can add money direct from your phone. After that it's a simple tap to get on. Our destination for the rest of the day was the Shibuya area which includes the Shibuya Scramble. It's a cross walk that builds up a lot of pedestrians and then switches the lights to all stop at once so everyone can cross in all directions. It was relatively early in the day so it wasn't quite as scrambly as I was expecting but it was still fun. I made sure to go across on the diagonal.

The day was filled with shopping in the Shibuya area which included stopping in at an all vending machine store. I've seen smaller versions of these in Canada but this one had three floors of vending machines. It was more gimmicky than anything. It was mostly just over priced toys in plastic eggs. It was the equivalent of $4.00 Canadian for a Disney figurine. I would have been happier if they had more of the claw machines. They were only a dollar and at least you felt you were getting a bit of entertainment out of the activity. Of course I didn't manage to win anything in the claw machines so I guess a guaranteed win was nice too. 

Our first booked destination of the day was the Shibuya Sky Tower. Tokyo is quite flat in all directions so they've got several buildings that you can pay to go to the top of. This particular tower is 47 floors. Not too tall but enough for Callie to want to hold onto a column while she was taking selfies. There is a huge helicopter landing spot on top and you can see in every direction through glass walls. I didn't consciously think about it while I was there but I now realize that it was city for as far as the eye could see in every direction. I don't even recall seeing a clear view of the ocean on the edge of the city. 

From the tallest peak our next stop was the first floor and then the basement. My brother-in-law had mentioned that if you want to find a good place to eat, head to the basements. On the first floor, we found a number of touristy places where you could get packaged treats like custardy pastries but if you took the escalator down another floor you were in a whole new world. We've tested this out in a few spots now and it definitely is a thing. There were kiosks of all kinds of foods including sushi, fried meet on sticks, breads and deserts. Everything was fresh and I can only imagine the place gets very busy at lunch with the huge office tower above. Callie ordered Macha and it was prepared with a traditional bamboo whisk right in front of her.  Everything was very clean and I you could eat for a year and never have the same thing. (Assuming you liked all food which is not exactly me. Good for everyone else though.)

Next up was the Pokémon store. One of several that we found in the area. At first I was a little confused because I don't recall Carter ever wanting to spend much time with Pokémon but soon discovered that his plan was to take an older unopened deck of cards and do an opening with his friends. You're either going to end up with a worthless deck of cards worth pennies or an incredibly expensive card worth thousands. Let's call this an underaged way of playing the lottery. 

Carter had done more research for our trip than I was aware of and he took us to a Mega store. Maybe it has another name but it was 7 floors of chaos. Packed to the brim with everything from alcohol to luggage, it was admittedly a great place to get souvenirs for the trip home. I had heard Japan has an obsession with KitKats and this store played that out completely. There were dozens of different flavors to choose from. It's also open 24 hours so if you lived nearby you could probably never need to shop anywhere else. 

While we were in the tower we saw a nearby park that looked like it would be a good place to take a break. This may have been a mistake. It was some unnecessary steps on our 32,000 step day and it was not as cool and inviting as we had hoped. The main area was under construction which is where the ponds and fountains will eventually be refurbished. The most notable thing about the area was the incredibly large ravens. They swoop down on you and are much bigger than crows. We've seen very few birds on our trip through Tokyo so these were a notable exception. 

Callie had done done some research as well and wanted to check out the statue of the dog that was made famous in the 1920's. He always waited for his owner to come back from the train station and when the owner passed away while at work, the dog still insisted on waiting. He was a fixture of the station for 10 years before he died. A local took care of his needs but he never game up on his owner.  The statue is so famous we couldn't even get a picture beside it because the lineup was so long. 

Our final destination was a few stations away and was another tower. This one looks like the Eiffel tower and Callie and Carter wanted to hit it at sunset. We miscalculated our booking a bit and arrived shortly after but it was still a great view. We saw the orange skies and were there when it went dark and we could see Tokyo lights in all directions. It's a very different life stye in Tokyo since I don't think we saw any individual houses so you're likely living in an apartment but it's clean and for our whole trip I've only seen one homeless person. It's possible he wasn't even homeless and was just taking a nap. 

A Trip to Japan - Tokyo Day One

Our flight left at 12:50p which is different snice we  usually are up at 3:00a for a 6:00a flight. We checked one bag and other than picking the worst line for getting on the flight where we ended up being the last to board, our boarding was uneventful. The flight itself was a bit more exciting. About halfway through they announced they were looking for a doctor on board. They paged a generic message and then for a specific passenger. For a moment we thought it was a heart attack but after they moved them to the front of the plane we figure it was likely a diabetic issue as the patient was walking around and we didn't have to divert or wait for ambulances when we landed.

We had a small hiccup at customs. Kerry knew that we had to download an app and get a QR code but she missed where it said you need a QR code for every passenger. Usually it's just one per family. We were stuck at the front of the line looking embarrassed as Carter saved the day. He reacted quickly, redid the questionnaire and we got our QR codes. It took a bit to get through the passport check as they do a very deliberate check of your documents, capture finger prints and facial recognition. After that we had to do a check in after our bags and we got pulled out of line for looking slow. Customs agent was very helpful though. 

Japan has special plugs. People said that you could use your North American plugs which is true for iPhone chargers but if you have three prongs you need an adaptor. I'm a bit slow getting to blogging as I had no way to charge my laptop and it only holds a couple hour charge. Problem solved by a nice Japanese hotel concierge where I got to use Aragato one-on-one for the first time. Still trying to sort out the second part of that phrase to make it a formal "Thank You very Much". Our rooms are normal size so lots of room to get around. Beds are a bit firm and the family is starting to try out the fancy toilet. 

We arrived at our hotel around 4:00p so we had time to check out the mall that is attached to our hotel. The weather is some of the hottest on record right now and it's very high humidity so it's nice to be able to walk through conditioned spaces. We weren't feeling very adventurous for our first night so we stopped in at the Outback Steakhouse. Prices are cheap after the conversion and they don't like tipping  which makes it even better. We got four full meals for $90 Canadian. Tomorrow we tour downtown Tokyo before we do a three day sting at Disneyland and Disney Seas.

Summer in Prince George

Historically my family has taken a trip to Prince George every summer and typically in the first week of July. This year Carter had summer school and Callie was finishing up her summer semester so there wasn't really a good time to go up so rather than driving I took the plane up myself. I don't think I have flown to Prince George since my wedding and at that time I took the RCMP plane. Despite the fact that its a propeller plane, it's a quick trip. Just over an hour and once I'm in Prince George it's only a 15 minute ride to my parents place. Certainly beats the 8 to 10 hour drive that it takes us most years. It's not cheap though so only makes sense when it's one person.

For the first full day there I went out to west lake where my family has property. Usually I spend some time cleaning things up or getting rocks to secure the beach but this year there was legitimately very little for me to do. The rock wall to protect the shore is now complete and all the leaves and branches were already cleaned. My brother Eric has even cleared out most of the underbrush. This year's project will have to be some headstones for the various pets we have buried there. 

The highlight of the trip was being able to prove my brother wrong despite him being 110% sure he was correct. At Christmas he gave me a blue cooler like the one on the left which confused me. He said he had found a duplicate to replace the one I had lost. This made no sense to me because I knew my parents still had the cooler and I was certain the one that had been left behind at a hotel during one of our vacations was very different. He insisted though so I had to wait until this visit to go out to the shed and show him the cooler. I even showed him a picture of the type I had actually been responsible for getting into the vehicle. He's still skeptical but the parents back up my version of the story.

For another one of the days my brother drove me back to his place in Quesnel after dinner and I stayed the night. We then got up the next day and checked out Barkerville. I think it's the best historic site in BC and people up north know all about it but people down south have often never heard of it. If you are ever in the neighborhood I highly recommend it. We checked out the town and had lunch and took a hike around the outskirts of the town along the ridge. This place was almost impacted by fire this past year which would have been a tragedy. They take fire safety here very seriously. 

Parent's Come to Town

My parents were in town for a few days in July. They try to come down at least once a year and for this weekend it happened to be on Kerry's birthday and she happened to be out of town with Callie. This left Carter and I to find something interesting to do. It turned out that there was a Roughriders game on the Saturday and my Dad is a big fan so we planned the day around that event. We took the Skytrain down to Science World and then got a water taxi to Granville Island. We wandered around and had lunch and then took the water taxi across the way to Yaletown and then walked to BC Place. 

Sometimes it's hard to recognize interesting things in your own town but this excursion would be interesting wherever I were to visit. The water taxi are easy to get tickets for and False Creek is a great view of downtown. There are also marina's with some very expensive vessels. Granville Island is world class and the walk through Yaletown is scenic as well. We got to the game with plenty of time and this time I was able to take my Dad to a game where his team won. I recall taking him to a Montreal Canadians game once and they were down 5-0 in the first period. a

The next day we took a quick trip down to Historic Stewart Farm to show my parents. I think I've taken my Mom there before but possibly not my Dad. They enjoyed the visit and Mom was interested to hear that I had taken her mom's raspberries and propagated them and built a trellis to keep them in check. I've been pretty busy lately but the raspberries are one item I make sure to keep up with. It was fun creating the trellis and then each year I have to make sure to weed them in the spring and then cut out the old canes and ensure everything is tied up in the fall. They are only a few years old and there is 24 feet from just 4 plants. 

Jeremy Helps Deliver Papers

Carter has had a paper route for several years now which I applaud but somehow it's turned into him and Kerry doing the papers every week as a mother daughter bonding moment. He only has to deliver them once a week where as I had to deliver them 6 days a week on my own so I'm not very sympathetic when she's unavailable to assist. This weekend the family was away in Oliver and Jeremy was over doing a project and the papers needed to get done. Rather than doing them myself though I took some pictures of Jeremy as if I had made him do them on his own. There is a picture of him attempting to walk carrying all the papers, trying to climb the fence at a unit with a gate and putting the papers in the recycling bin at the end. I sent these photos to Carter with no explanation for fun. Thanks to Jeremy for being a good sport about it.

Father's Day

It was a sunny Father's Day this year. I was preparing for my cataract surgery and had to wear my glasses all weekend so I wasn't very interested in going anywhere. My glasses have a bad prescription in them so not only do I look funny but I can't see either. We took a quick trip out to Krauss Berry Farms. I really like this farm but I'm finding they are increasing the prices a bit faster than inflation. They were selling honey for almost twice what we could get local honey for elsewhere. We picked up some pies and pastries and we stopped off at the Honey Bee Centre on the way back. Much more reasonable prices.
 

Surrey Historic Rialway

I volunteer at the Historic Stewart Farm and one of the perks is that I often get the opportunity to be a tourist in my own town for free. This time it was at the Surrey Historic Railway. The starting point of the railway is in Cloverdale and they have spent many years restoring some of the original railcars. The one we were in had been shipped away and they found it in the US some place. It was once part of the British Columbia Electric Railway (BCER)'s interurban line which operated from 1910 to 1950, connecting communities from Vancouver to Chilliwack. It's interesting to think we had local rail service so long ago only to lose it and to need to resuscitated it later.

If they had kept it going and built all the cities around rail it wouldn't cost us so much to do Skytrain now. The trip itself is fun but not very long. They take you down their private spur and then have permission to use the mainline on Sundays. You then proceed through some industrial and farmland before turning around and coming back. You'd think you would be backwards in one direction but not so. The seats allow you to stand up and switch them to face the opposite direction. They were very proud of those restored seats.