Tokyo: Tuesday, 11/5
The girls and I were on our own today while Andrew went to work. After a leisurely early morning of pastries and the nebulizer for Greta, Andrew left for work and the girls and I walked to the Toyokawa Inari shrine. It was beautiful, full of fox statues with the red bibs (we still don’t know what they mean). I got our temple book stamped.
Then we decided to pick up where we’d left off yesterday: at Takeshita Street, with an onward walk to Kiddyland. We took the subway there (yay to me for navigating it alone!). Kiddyland is full of Japan fun--lots of Rilakkuma and Hello Kitty and Sumikko Gurashi. Everything is also quite expensive. I told the kids they could each choose one thing, and after much deliberation they each chose a set of miniature Rilakkuma figurines--exactly what I would have chosen for them. I bought myself a small Sumikko Gurashi owl.
We stopped for crepes for lunch--ordering them from a kind of vending machine, then handing the tickets to a girl in the kiosk--and ate them on a bench. Then we walked the other way up Takeshita, with a goal: enormous cotton candies at Totti Candy Factory. I first saw these things on Instagram when I was planning our trip and knew we had to try them. The girls decided they each wanted their own rather than sharing one super-huge one, so they each got a three-color cotton candy--still just comically gigantic. There’s no way to receive one of these without feeling joyful. It was so much fun. And delicious, too--I don’t even like cotton candy much, but these were so light and cloud-like. We stood on the street outside the shop to eat with all the other cotton-candy eaters. Definitely a highlight of the trip.
Our Takeshita adventure ended with a couple more capsules at Picnic, and then we headed back to the hotel.
After a little rest (I was by this point lying in bed; the coughing was worse), the girls wanted to go to a playground, so I found a little one nearby. I was glad for the chance to just sit while they played. Fading, I took us back to Gyoza It for dinner. I’m feeling extremely ill, but we had a pretty great day.
Then we decided to pick up where we’d left off yesterday: at Takeshita Street, with an onward walk to Kiddyland. We took the subway there (yay to me for navigating it alone!). Kiddyland is full of Japan fun--lots of Rilakkuma and Hello Kitty and Sumikko Gurashi. Everything is also quite expensive. I told the kids they could each choose one thing, and after much deliberation they each chose a set of miniature Rilakkuma figurines--exactly what I would have chosen for them. I bought myself a small Sumikko Gurashi owl.
We stopped for crepes for lunch--ordering them from a kind of vending machine, then handing the tickets to a girl in the kiosk--and ate them on a bench. Then we walked the other way up Takeshita, with a goal: enormous cotton candies at Totti Candy Factory. I first saw these things on Instagram when I was planning our trip and knew we had to try them. The girls decided they each wanted their own rather than sharing one super-huge one, so they each got a three-color cotton candy--still just comically gigantic. There’s no way to receive one of these without feeling joyful. It was so much fun. And delicious, too--I don’t even like cotton candy much, but these were so light and cloud-like. We stood on the street outside the shop to eat with all the other cotton-candy eaters. Definitely a highlight of the trip.
Our Takeshita adventure ended with a couple more capsules at Picnic, and then we headed back to the hotel.
After a little rest (I was by this point lying in bed; the coughing was worse), the girls wanted to go to a playground, so I found a little one nearby. I was glad for the chance to just sit while they played. Fading, I took us back to Gyoza It for dinner. I’m feeling extremely ill, but we had a pretty great day.
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