Home Sweet Home

This is the drive up to our apartment in Moto Azabu...


This is a cluster of skyscrapers we see from the front of our building...

Our apartment building... Jonas out front of the circular drive

Jonas in our entry way... yes we get to walk the red carpet each day... we feel special. Jonas likes to bust through the glass automatic doors... the doorman got upset yesterday because I think he was worried Jonas would hurt himself... I am more worried he is going to break their doors... we are working on this

Here is our park! It is a nice small park and one of the reasons Glenn and I chose this apartment. I love the large clock in the center. Many parks have a large clock in the center... so great for me since I hate wearing a watch.

First Weekend in Tokyo

Shailey and Emma making their way through the crowds... see the Kimonos? Many people dressed up in traditional costumes for the festival.

Photo of the CROWD of people!

Shailey and Emma getting slurpees... icees... well, something in Japanese very similar, only you could add a mango topping, or a soybean topping, even a tomato topping... sound yummy?

Emma says YUM!

Roasted Corn right there on the spot... hot and fresh with some spice to it... yummy!


Emma fishing for little animal toys...


This is the 500 yen dress ($4.00) Shailey purchased and the 3 little animal toys Emma fished.

Here we are at festival that takes place at the end of our street. It was VERY crowded with people and food booths. Glenn watched Jonas at home and I took the girls to check it out. We purchased snow cones, roasted corn on a stick, and a chocolate banana (not frozen... oops...little yucky). Shailey found a cheap pink dress to buy, I found a small purse (to carry the loads of Japanese coins I use now) and Emma played a game where she fished for little toy animals (you can't have enough toy animals... that is what she says). We had a blast exploring our new surroundings. We learned and used our first word... "sumimasen"... which means "excuse me"... as we made our way through the crowd. It was much fun.

Land Ho!

After 14 hours of traveling, the kids and I finally landed in Japan. Glenn offered to fly to California so he could fly with us to Japan, but we decided it would be more helpful for one member of our bunch to not have JET LAG. The kids were super travelers. I never heard a peep out of the girls... thank you Nintendo DS and Disney channel. Jonas really amazed me. I had a lot of anxiety about taking my active 3 year old boy... a lot of anxiety. Fortunately he slept 2 times for 3 hours each... I will credit that to going to Disneyland 4 times in 2 weeks, plus a number of other activities that made him skip naps and get home at 2:00 am.... I think he was totally worn out. It was a fabulous flight.