Jie was the planner for this Japan trip. Papa had been asking the big kids to help carry the shopping and grocery items and to take care of Mama. I felt like my years of labour were paying off now.
Jie wanted a quick bite so we stopped to buy a financier and a dorayaki from a bakery! Googled to learn that a financier was a French pastry while a castella was Japanese. And that the thing that Doraemon ate was called a dorayaki! I loved dorayakis!
The plan was to go to a theme park but we worry that it might rain so we decided to go to an indoor one. Jie told Daddy that it would be logistically better to go ice skating first and Papa agreed. I must say that a Jie had a head for directions and planning, just like Papa. Definitely not as seasoned as Papa but imagine how impressive she would be at his age of 44 now that she had started learning all these skills at 15!
Chanced upon this roller slide. Papa actually saw someone’s video talking about this exact slide. That day, we were talking of this word serendipity and I must say this was definitely a serendipitous encounter. It was thrilling to go down the slide, albeit a little sad that we got to do it only once. I would not have minded spending more time there.
This was my personal favourite stop. It sounded so frivolous when Jie talked about it. Due to the change of plans, since the ice rink opened at 11am, we woke up far too early and decided to go to this shrine. I was mildly amused and told the young ones that we were going to a place which worshiped rice balls.
It was hidden in a quiet, nondescript and pleasant residential neighbourhood that was a contrast to the gleaming apartments, buildings and Tokyo Skytree in the vicinity.
I read that this shrine paid homage to a deity who was associated with harvest and people used to offer rice balls as offerings, and with time, people came to associate this shrine with rice balls.
While goggling for this blogpost, I read other blogs which said that the association with rice balls came about because the deity’s name sounded like onigiri and thus people made a pun on his name.
Regardless of how it started, it was a most whimsical place filled with really cute onigiri stones.
A miniature set-up
Plushies hanging from the trees
Onigiri rocks hidden in the nooks and crannies of the stone
We threw a coin into the collection box, rang the bell, made a wish, bowed twice, clapped twice and bowed again. Hope all our wishes would come true!
One could buy a wooden onigiri board to write wishes
It was a really delightful place.
We were trying to find out the story of its origins and caught our reflection in the reflective surface.
They decorated their own onigiri stones.
🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙
So cute, loved that the placement of their hands seemed to form a heart shape. Spent $0 but a thoroughly enjoyable experience!
Walking to the train station… oh did you know that the laptop broke down and Mama had to learn how to use the iPad to blog? It was so uncanny that our old laptop also broke down when we took it to a cold country in Dec 2024. Papa thought perhaps the luggage got bumped about during the flight so the card went out of place while Mama thought the freezing weather might have caused the problem. Oh well!
It was hard to type using the iPad. Mama found the panel hard to navigate too, and Papa had spotted a few typing errors in the previous posts. Oops!
Not going up the Skytree!
Tong asked why Jie wanted to take a photo of the yellow tickets again as they were the same as yesterday’s anyway. Oh well, we would just do what Jie asked.
Had a pleasant walk through a tranquil park.
Ah the leaves looked so lovely.
They insisted on crossing the little brook.
Loved this serene picture of us gazing upon the peaceful lake
Yay ice skating! First time Mei was doing it without the skating aid and she was proud of herself for picking up ice skating quite fast!
They had special blades for the young ones. Instead of one blade, Mei’s shoes had two! They helped her balance better and that gave her the confidence to try!
Jun was a scaredy cat most of the time but he was really daring when it came to ice skating. He was zooming at quite a fast speed, not caring that he might fall or bump into things. He fell a grand total of 23 times but I must say that he seemed to have got the hang of ice skating pretty well!
Mama also managed to skate slowly around by herself!
The kids definitely enjoyed themselves there! So much so that Mei was sad when it was time to leave.
Took the train that travelled above ground and we had got blue tickets this time!
Checked out the indoor theme park but the rides seemed too scary so the small ones went to the indoor playground for 2 whole hours.
They even made two friends.
Papa went to check out this robot (whose name I did not know) with the big ones.
Silly expressions
Jie bought donuts from Mister Donut! The big ones also played at the claw machine and spent some $16. Jie got a miserable Kirby plush toy while Tong got nothing. Mama took a nap while the small ones played. Papa also took a nap while the big ones played. I guess … we were not getting any younger and needed a siesta in the afternoon! Ha
Outside Macs, we tucked into the donuts. Argh Jun was biting off Pikachu’s ear. Oh and we thought we saw first snow, but nay, more like a very light drizzle and so the raindrops looked like snowflakes in the spotlights. Erm…not supposed to have snow in Tokyo at this time but the weather forecast on Thursday did say it might happen on Sun. Sun would be our last day in Tokyo…I did hope the kids would get their wish!
Caught the fireworks
Mei said it was the highlight of her day 3.
This was actually taken at the beginning of the day…but how apt to put it at the end of this blog post…everyone else was soundly asleep. I could hear Papa snoring away. We had curry rice, pork rice and Burger King again in the comfort of our toasty apartment (which was said to be burning hot according to our capybara who should be a polar bear 🐻❄️ )… we ended the night talking about our favourite part of each day…
I guess every day was memorable because we got to do new things as a family…and it was most comforting to come back to the apartment after a long day outside, all of us safe, tired but feeling that sense of togetherness, of contentment and ease, feeling things were all right in the world because we were together as a family.
Love u all, kiddos 1,2,3,4！
