Land of the Deer (aka Miyajima Island)

After Peace Memorial Park and a quick lunch in our hotel room (mostly so Egan could crawl and play), we took the trolley to a ferry so we could visit Miyajima Island. 

It turns out that this weekend was also their annual Oyster festival! Again, we were confronted with really wanting to like oysters, but it's not meant to be...

Miyajima is actually named Itsukushima and it's the home of Itsukushima Shrine. It has a "floating" Torii gate, which is one of the most photographed sites in all of Japan. 

We happened to arrive right at low tide...

 A very nice American family took this for us:

 And that's the actual shrine from the water...

 The island has a number of other buildings and sites - this is the 5-story pagoda...

which is right next to the Daiganji Temple. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the outside of the temple...I was too busy laughing at Tim's giant feet in the tiny slippers...

 I'm not sure why, but rice paddles were very prominent on Miyajima and the temple was no exception! There were giant rice paddles, like the one below, all over...

(Of course Wikipedia has the answer! Evidently the monk who invented the paddle lived on the island.)

 Here's are a few vantages from the Shrine...

 You can see the pagoda and temple on the hill behind Tim in the picture below.

 And this is my new favorite family picture! Even Egan was smiling!

I will look for a picture, but Miyajima Island has TONS of deer. And they are not afraid of humans. In fact, the big ol' rats were quite aggressive in their search for food. On more than one occasion, we saw them snatch bags from unsuspecting tourists and follow people who were eating. Tim almost had to help a lady in a wheelchair when the deer went for her backpack - luckily she got away! Of course, there were plenty of people petting and feeding them, but I moved as far away as possible!! Blech! 

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Peace Memorial Park

For our only full day in Hiroshima, I had planned to hit as much of the "big stuff" as possible. For us, that meant visiting the A-bomb dome and the Peace Park and then spending the afternoon on Miyajima Island.

Our hotel, the Rihga Royal Hotel, was literally across the street from the A-bomb dome. It also happens to be the tallest building in Hiroshima. We were on the 24th floor and had an unobstructed view of Hiroshima Castle.

As we walked into the park, the first thing we encountered was the A-bomb dome. This was almost directly below the epicenter of the blast. Amazingly, the structure of the building is still standing. Unfortunately, while we were there they were assessing its structural integrity and so we had to see it with the scaffolding. 

 It's an odd experience visiting places like this - do you smile for pictures? For me, it was important to get pictures with us in them - Egan won't remember this trip, but he will be able to look back and think "I've been there."

Scattered around the park are shrines dedicated to different groups of people. I believe this was specifically for all the children workers who were in the blast area that day. I didn't ever know this, but the Japanese government employed their students to work as part of the war effort. That day, several groups were demolishing buildings to create fire breaks in the event of an air raid. 

This was the children's shrine. Surrounding it are crates stuffed with origami cranes. 

There are literally thousands of cranes in these crates. These chains of folded cranes are sent or brought from all over the world.

 This is the Peace Flame. It's supposed to look like two hands open to the sky. It has burned continuously since 1964 and will continue to burn until there is no more threat of nuclear weapons.

 The Memorial Cenotaph - it contains a scroll with all of the names of those killed by the a-bomb. It sits at one end of the Pond of Peace and you can see several monuments line up through it.

 And this was the museum - it was sobering. Half of the museum was under construction and evidently it was the half that shows the lead-up to the bomb dropping. I think it would have helped to have seen a bit more, because we walked into "the bomb has dropped, people are dead/dying/fatally burned and now the city is on fire." It was a little overwhelming.

We visited a few of the other monuments on our way back to the hotel. Overall, I'm happy we visited and I think it is so important that we have these memorials and reminders of the tragic nature of war. Tim and I have somehow found ourselves on a tour of WWII memorials and I would definitely rank this up there with Auschwitz in terms of the brutal honesty of the exhibit. 

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Valentine's in Hiroshima

This year Valentine's Day weekend also happened to be President's Day weekend, meaning Tim got three days off! We really wanted to visit Hiroshima this trip, so we made reservations, got Shinkansen (bullet train) tickets and were on our way!

First stop: Shinagawa to meet our Shinkansen! Our trip was 4 hours! 

 We passed Mt. Fuji and it was gorgeous!

 Even Egan approved.

There were a lot of notices that this train line was delayed due to snow...

They weren't lying! This was in the Kyoto/Osaka area. Thankfully the "delay" was only a few minutes. We didn't even notice.

We got into Hiroshima around 2:30ish and decided to walk to our Hotel. We were a little distracted trying to find our way, so I didn't get any pictures until that evening. We walked around their large, covered shopping district. Our ultimate goal was Okonomi-mura - it's a three-story building with food stalls that only sell Okonomiyaki. 

Hiroshima is famous for two foods - Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki and Oysters. We don't like Oysters (although we both WISH we did after this trip), but we love Okonomiyaki! There are two pretty distinct styles and we had never tried the Hiroshima-style. 

It starts with a crepe-like layer on the bottom, followed by a very large portion of cabbage, then noodles (soba or udon), your meat, and it's topped with an omelet like egg mixture and teriyaki sauce. 

It was delicious!!! We LOVED the noodles! The other popular style is Osaka-style and it doesn't have noodles and all of the ingredients are mixed together rather than layered. And, yes, that is a big grill for a table. Egan was on my back for most of the meal, but when it had cooled down, he moved to my lap and ate quite a bit of mine. He did such a stellar job eating off the chopsticks!

These ladies ran the food stall we visited and they were just enamored with Egan the whole meal. He was babbling away and they would just chat right back!

Egan was totally passed out by the time we got back to our hotel!

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Busiest Place on Earth??

This past Saturday (2/28) was a beautiful, sunny day in Tokyo. We decided that we would take the train up to Tokyo Disneyland for the evening and see the special "Frozen Fantasy" stuff they have going on throughout the park. 

And that's as far as we got. 

Seriously.

The park was at absolute capacity by 3:00pm. We ended up getting an early dinner at Ikispara - their Downtown Disney equivalent and we were home by 7:00pm. On the plus side, Ikispara was not crowded at all! 

We had friends at the park that day and they told us that ride lines were 3+ hours, food lines were 1+ hour(s) and the bathroom was at least a 30 min. wait. Bummer!

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9 Months!

Unfortunately February doesn't have a 30th day, so these were taken on March 2nd. I guess Egan didn't really turn 9 months old...

9 Month Updates

9.8 kg - Height unknown

Eats 3 meals a day 

-Likes bananas, rice, beans, spinach, sushi (fully cooked stuff!), chicken, cheese, hummus, oatmeal, cheerios, potatoes, spaghetti, avocado - he pretty much eats whatever we eat! 

Crawling on non-hardwood surfaces - he still likes to slide on the hardwood

Pulls himself up to standing

Babbles! He says "dadadada" a lot - we're still working on "mamama," but he's got the "nanana" sound.

Enjoys swimming lessons

Sleep is still pretty inconsistent - bummer. 

Likes to pull blankets off his face for peek-a-boo

Started drinking through a straw

We are having a lot of fun with our little guy! He's become quite a handful and we're definitely having to baby proof and put things (remote controls, Kleenex boxes, etc.) away - he's very curious. On the flip side, he's so well mannered in public. He was a rock star on our trip to Hiroshima over Valentine's Day! 4-5 hour train rides are no joke, but he did a great job and we were able to really enjoy a few days away. 

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CupNoodles and Chinatown

One of our first adventures was to the CupNoodles Museum in Yokohama with our friends Eric and Michelle. CupNoodles were invented in the 60s by a poor Japanese man name Momofuku Ando, who (if you believe the museum) is a national treasure in Japan. 

This is one of 3 walls showcasing the history and variety of CupNoodles. There are flavors here I had never heard of - did you know they have seafood curry? Pretty much any flavor you can think of, they've put it into CupNoodles!

My favorite part of the museum was on the 3rd floor. Here we are decorating our OWN CupNoodles! As you can tell, Egan was quite helpful...

 Our finished drawings - Tim and I weren't quite as inspired as Eric & Michelle!

Once you finish decorating your Cup, it's on to the filling and sealing stations. Earlier in our tour (and several times throughout the museum) they tell you how Momofuku revolutionized noodles by filling the cups upside down. We got to crank our cups through the special machine to fill the noodles in correctly. You can also see the toppings station further down. We could do one flavor (seafood, curry, tomato, or original) and four toppings. I believe I added chicken, garlic, green onions, and corn with original flavoring. Tim had cheese in his and did the tomato flavoring!

Here are Eric and Michelle modeling our finished CupNoodles. Yep, they provide a small balloon package to keep it safe during transport!

This was one of exhibits the museum created to demonstrate creative thinking. It's all about perspective!

Momofuku Ando!

After the walking through the museum, we decided to head over to Chinatown. Yokohama has the largest Chinatown in Japan and for some reason we never visited the first time we came! Thankfully Eric and Michelle knew their way around and we feel pretty confident about visiting again in the future.

This large gate is the entrance - it was pretty astounding.

Tim and Egan walking down the street - I don't know if this picture gives a good enough impression of how crowded it was in the street. It was definitely a busy place!

There were hundreds of restaurants and the aroma in the street was delicious! In Japan, many of the restaurants have display cases outside of their menu items. We saw this monstrosity next to a full display case - do you think we could order it??

 And, of course, Chinatown wouldn't be complete without a few beautiful shines sprinkled throughout the area.

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7 & 8 Months!

7 MONTHS!

Egan turned 7 Months old right before we left our home in WA and, in the flurry of packing, we didn't get any pictures until we arrived in Japan. Thankfully we were able to get him in for his 7 month appointment on the 31st and he's officially up-to-date with all of his immunizations until he turns 1.

7 Month Updates

19lbs, 3 oz and 28.75" long

Sitting unassisted for long periods. 

Army crawls everywhere - the kid has lots of upper body strength.

Has three teeth! (Two bottom and one top)

Celebrated his first Christmas!

Baptized on 12/28/14 at GGma M's church in Lakebay, WA

Met his Aunt, Uncle and Cousins from Germany in person!!

8 MONTHS!

8 Month Updates

9.2ish oz & over 70 cm long

(Japan uses the metric system. And the only place where I can measure and weigh him is in the baby changing rooms and he is a wiggly guy! I'm going to attempt to get a more accurate length measurement next time.)

Stayed up until midnight and celebrated New Years with the family.

Traveled internationally and got first passport stamp!

Sat in Business Class (a first for Mom and Dad too!)

Took first train ride

Went down a regular slide and roller slide (assisted) - what a daredevil!

Army crawling all over the place

Gets up on all fours, quite frequently, in a bear position

Likes to rock back and forth on hands and knees, but still reverts to army crawling

Has four teeth with a fifth tooth popping through!

Eats at least two meals a day (Breakfast and Dinner) - diaper changes have become quite interesting.

Babbles frequently - especially in Mom's ear during conversations

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