Adoption Trip!

Like other blog posts - if you want to see pictures, you have to be my Facebook friend. Unlike other posts, this one is composed from e-mails sent to family members during our trip to China. I took out some of the more personal stuff....
In case you're losing count:

My kids are:
H - The oldest
AS - Singaporean friends think his name starts with S. American friends know him as A.
O - Formerly the youngest
AB - Newest Daughter
X - Newest Son


November 19, 2012

Well, we made it to China safely. The only incident was that H woke up as the plane was landing. After we checked into the hotel, she discovered that she'd left her Kindle in the seat pocket of the last plane!!!
The girl at the front desk helped us track it down. She deserves a medal. My Chinese skills allow me to say "small computer" "book" or "looking for", but I could have never ever negociated all the phone calls she made.
H and I took a taxi back to the airport and got it back. Whew!


We are getting ready to go to breakfast now. We meet the guide at 8:30, and she will take us to the govt. office where we'll meet X. Erin and I both feel LESS nervous now than we did before we left Singapore. I think a lot of the stress was making the connection (not on same ticket as Singapore flight), and getting here with everything.


November 19, 2012



Well, we have met X and I think I'm in love - again! The first five minutes he was very stand-offish. The next ten minutes he just wanted out of the room and back to his nanny from the orphange. Lots of tears! :-( It was so hard on him, of course, like we all knew it would be. But the orphanage director is a man, and he came over and helped calm X down some. We were all a little nervous about touching and hugging too quickly. But he let Erin hold him, and let me carry him out and down the elevator. He is a solid built little guy! The 3t pants I bought him in Singapore fit him, but he weighs a lot more than any of my skinny-minnies did at almost 4!!
We got some smiles out of him before we'd even left the room. He liked the Build a Bear puppy dog that we brought him. Well, he liked joining his two new big brothers in pretending to wrestle the puppy, and do other semi-violent boy type things to a perfectly cute stuffed animal.
We stopped in the hotel lobby to go over some paperwork with our guide. Erin spoke with the guide while X tried to wrestle with me. He's going to be a great fan of "knock Daddy over". He'll have to learn that Mommy isn't so much of a wrestle fan. But he enjoyed the game and me tickling him a little when he got too rough. I also let him take some pictures with my camera. That was the first time we noticed that he wanted to hold the camera very close to his face to see the screen. That is the only indication of a vision problem so far. He was looking at books with me though, and didn't do that, so maybe the glare on the screen was bothering him. But right now, his vision is certainly not slowing him down in the least! Yea!!
Once back in the hotel room, O went straight for his Nintendo. X wanted in on that action, so I got my ipad out and we played pop the bubbles and drawing, and on the piano keyboard. I may be prejudiced already, but I think he's a pretty sharp kid. He has worked at solving some problems like how to get his Jacob's ladder toy to stay on his dump truck. That took a while, but he worked out that if you raise the bed of the truck and cram the blocks between the bed and the cab, it will stay pretty well. It's also fun to crash the truck, of course.

His foster family sent letters with him (in English!). They are so sweet. I'm grateful to them for doing that. There are also lots more pictures - including from when he was 1 and 2 years old. He already had a little backpack, and he was really clinging to his bag of snacks. He has potato chips, shrimp crackers, and 'potato sticks'. In his pockets he had a big handful of sunflower seeds. They kept dropping out, and I said he was leaving a breadcrumb trail. He's also come up with some candy from some pocket or other.

We are communicating in broken Chinese and gestures. I tried to tell him that it was time to go eat lunch, and I think he said, 'I don't want to eat'. (He was busy coloring at the time.) Bless his heart, he knows I can speak a little Chinese, but he keeps using words that were not in Chapters 1 - 24!! I'm not sure he'd ever been in a fancy restaurant before. He wanted to run the dump truck on the fine china, and stand the chopsticks up in the drinking glass. (Standing chopsticks upright is taboo because it looks like incense for the dead.) I could tell that he was watching H and brothers, and he tried to imitate them - mostly. He kept wiping brown sauce on his yellow shirt sleeve. Oops! H and I showed him how to use the napkin. The oddest thing was that he isn't very good with chopsticks! I don't know what he's been using, but I think chopsticks are at least kinda new. He was trying the two hand approach at first! Eventually he got it to where he would pick up the food with the chopsticks and use his left hand as back up. He ate beef and cucumber, green beans, eggplant, rice with vegetables with the special black vinegar the area is famous for. I'll need to pick up a bottle of that because he gestured until I poured some on his rice. He ate two helpings of everything.
When he finished, he played with his truck on his chair and then suddenly got the "uh-oh" look on his face. I got him to the potty pretty much on time. After that, I brought him back up to the room and changed his pants. He had on 2 pairs of thick thick sweatpants (it was 40 degrees or so this morning). He wasn't at all happy about not getting to put his boots back on. I don't blame him. They're cool boots.
He also wasn't happy about the whole nap thing! I read him some lullabies from a bilingual book. He sang "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" with me in Chinese! Awwwww!!!! Then he sang me another song. I told him I didn't know that one and he'd have to teach it to me. So he sang it again.....slower! Lol! I'm going to record him singing it so I can play it really slow and learn it.
I had to get my Mommy face on and wrestle him into bed. I had AS come in and be an example, and Erin came up from lunch and helped. X realized I wasn't going to let him out of his little bed, but he drew the line at lying down. So I started rubbing his back, and in about 2 minutes he was asleep sitting up! He still refused to let go of the side of the bed. I had to lean over the bed so his head was on my shoulder. Eventually, Erin got his hand between X's hand and the bed, and after a good 5 minutes of snoring, we were able to get him lying down. He's been asleep for about an hour now. When he gets up, we're planning to walk down to the river and back.
Tomorrow we go back to the government office to sign the official paperwork to make him ours. I know there are a lot of challenges ahead, but I think today has gone pretty well so far. He let me feed him, and he will look us in the eyes. He also came and got my attention to show me something. These are all good signs.


November 23, 2012

Well, I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. We had a pretty relaxing day. We went down the street to the bookstore after breakfast. The kids all found something (). The older kids found some wooden d.i.y. models for $2 ea., and decided to buy some for each other (and us?) for Christmas. X found a book he liked. I'd call it a baby book, but he likes it. It's about counting. O. found a book that we refer to as "my first weapons". It has a large picture on each page of a revolver or machine gun or hand grenade, etc. It has the English, Chinese, and Pinyin (Romanized pronunciation of the Characters). X likes it too of course. So now the "tank missile" joke won't die. So my kid's first English words are "apple, O.K., banana, taxi, and tank missile". great.

For lunch on Thanksgiving, we walked down the street to a restaurant our guide recommended. It was, uh, interesting. No one there spoke English. We did o.k. with my 1st grade level Chinese until the waitress came back in and asked me SOMETHING. Still don't have a clue. I told her, "I'm sorry, I don't understand the question." She eventually gave up and left. I don't know if our order changed after that or not. Oh well. The food was pretty good, and X immediately recognized the local specialty and knew what kind of sauce he wanted on his noodles. It seems like a simple recipe, so I'll have to find it online.

After lunch, our guide picked us up and took us to a local park. We walked around and came to the amusement park area. It's so cold here, I can't believe there's anyone who wants to ride amusement park rides, but a few were going. I told the kids they could ride something if it stayed on the ground. I'm not a big believer in China's safety standards. So we found some bumper cars and Erin and the big kids rode them. X got really excited watching them, so we decided he could do it too. He and I went in one car. The cars had small guns for the passenger to operate, but he was a bit overwhelmed by all the action. He only remembered to shoot the other cars when I reminded him. This, in spite of the fact that he's been playing with AS's new toy guns and knows exactly what to do with them.
After that, we walked on around. We saw some older men playing with Chinese Yo-Yo's. They were pretty talented. We watched them toss and catch them for a while.

http://www.chineseyoyo.org

We might have stayed longer, but the wind chill was in the 30's. brrr.

We were all happy to stay indoors after that. Since we had a big lunch, we only snacked for supper. AS ended up waking us up at 3:30 a.m. with stomach problems. I don't know what it was, but he must've eaten something that didn't agree with him. He stayed home from this morning's sightseeing. O.'s sore throat is much worse today. He also stayed home. He's pretty miserable, and we're trying to keep him eating and drinking so it doesn't get worse. My throat is hurting too, I'm drinking tea and taking cough drops right alongside O. I'm hoping I'll still have my voice on Sunday when we fly to Zhengzhou to meet AB.

X still has some congestion. I have no idea if his throat hurts too. He was very concerned this morning about both big brothers. We woke up a little earlier because we had to get breakfast and meet the guide at 8:45. I think he would've slept 'till 9 if we'd let him. H, X, and I went with the guide out to the countryside to see a "temple". It isn't so much of a temple now as a park. It's a large complex with many buildings. Several of the buildings are 900+ years old! There's a tree there that is 3,000 years old! It is being supported by another tree and several poles. There was a pretty little spring there, and some nice ancient Chinese architecture and bridges. X was acting kind of sleepy and clingy. He wouldn't walk at all, so I had to carry him around the entire place.
On the way out we bought some interesting toys for $1 ea. They are small wooden cats with stings attached. When you pinch the string hard and slide your fingers down the string, it sounds like a cat. Well, like a wailing cat. It's hard to say who liked it more - H or X! Back in the van, he fell asleep almost instantly.
H talked me into asking the guide to stop at McDonald's to pick everyone up a cheeseburger. We tried, but apparently much was lost in translation. I pointed to the cheeseburger picture, but ended up with chicken sandwiches for everyone. sigh. No one was too angry, and everyone ate. AS even ate some fries and a nugget or two.

Since X slept all the way back in the van, we were worried about nap time. He probably didn't need one now, but if we skipped it, he'd be awful by supper time. (At least if he's like the other 3 were!) So we put him to bed a little late. NOT. HAPPY. It took a long time to get him to stop crying long enough to fall asleep. He was asking for something. I still don't know what. Not potty (we did that and when I asked again he said, "no"), not water, not milk, so I don't know. It took 45 minutes to get him asleep - which is double any other time this week. I hope he didn't want something legitimate, and just couldn't communicate it to us.

In a lot of ways, it's like dealing with a non-verbal 2 year old. We play a lot of: "this one?" "that one?" etc. Although he's about to turn 4 in January, he hasn't used a regular cup much. He doesn't recognize written numbers, but he can count up to ten, and sorta up to twenty. Erin and I both think he's pretty clever though.

I forgot to mention that on the way to the temple we stopped at the place where he was found. I took some pictures in case that's something he'd like to know about some day. I wanted to put up a poster with his picture with a note to his Birthmom - just in case she goes by there. But there was no place to post anything. The guide tried to help me find a place, but we struck out. We even asked at the post office. No luck. I have to say however, that the guide was surprised/impressed with the note I'd written in Chinese characters. (Bwa ha ha!) The rest of the family is learning Chinese phrases. Everyone knows "Hai Yo Fei Ji" Which means 'airplane again!' :-) AS, Erin, and I all take turns zooming him around. No one can play it long though, because he's solid and he squirms.

He called Erin "Baba" first the other night. Then last night he called me "Mama". Awwww. I'll always remember that. So he's kinda getting used to us. However, he is very resistant to taking a bath, and so far we haven't pushed it. He lets me change his underwear and help him in the potty. I've also changed his shirt. I've run water in the tub for him to play in, but he does not want to get in. He just reaches over the side and splashes. He likes the water, but doesn't want to take his shirt off. Erin volunteered to let him take a shower with him. We'll see. I think it might have to be a bath. It may just be too cold here, and he'll enjoy the idea more in Singapore after he's good and sweaty. He hasn't been rolling in the dirt or anything, so he's not too dirty.

Well, that's today's update. Tomorrow we're supposed to go to a museum. Sunday we fly to Zhengzhou.


November 24, 2012

This morning we went to the "Provincial Museum" and saw lots of ancient things from this area. They had a wing for jade, porcelain, coins, paintings, etc. We all went even though O. still feels pretty bad. At least his fever is down to almost normal. Hooray! The exertion also left AS sitting down in the hall waiting for us at times. I think he's just weak from the stomach bug. He's eating normally now with no ill effects. X was ho-hum on the museum. We 'rented' (for free) a stroller there and he used it more than half the time. He looked at some of the more vivid things, but there wasn't really anything that a 3 year old would be interested in. The big kids kept him entertained by pushing him around (literally around - in circles) in the stroller while the grownups enjoyed the museum. At one point I was carrying X and we came to some life-sized wax figures. They looked normal to me, but X found them terrifying! He climbed me like a tree and wouldn't let go. I carried him for a while and even after he went back in the stroller he wanted to hold my hand tightly.
We stopped on the way back and got some more throat medicine for everybody. I'm not sure X's throat hurts necessarily, but he does have some sinus issues going on.
Again, the air is so polluted here that he may be used to having sinus issues.
Oh. When we came up to the room from breakfast, the maid was vacuuming our room. X watched suspiciously, and when she went past us he bent down to feel the carpet to try to figure out what she'd done to it, or maybe to see if it was wet. I guess the foster family didn't have carpet, or didn't have that kind of vacuum cleaner. :-) So many new things for him to learn about!
Nap time went much easier today. It took about 5 minutes for him to go to sleep. He has been happy and energetic tonight. At one point he tried to take the toy gun from O.'s hand. I stopped him and he tried to pitch a fit. I started a timer and told him he could have it back in 10 minutes. Of course he didn't want to wait, and I'm not sure he understood. But when the timer ran out and O. gave him back the gun, all was forgiven. By that time he'd gotten interested in some music anyway.

Erin took him, H and AS down for the "Western Buffet" for supper. O. and I decided to order "Stewed Chicken Soup with Chinese Medicine" from room service instead. Not sure what the 'Chinese medicine' is. It looks like julienne carrot strips. Tastes good on a sore throat though.

Our plane leaves for Zhengzhou tomorrow night at 5 something. We'll leave for the airport at 3. So we may have to pay to keep the hotel room long enough for X to get his nap. (I say it's worth it!) Hopefully the airplane won't be too scary.

I'm praying that everything goes as well with AB as it has with X!! I'm starting to get nervous again......


27 November, 2012

We have met AB and she is sooo cute! And..... She is definitely NOT X!!! LOL! They are maybe as opposite as they can be. :-) She is very very quiet and gentle. So easy to love! (She still has traces of red finger nail polish (!) on her thumbnails.) The crying lasted longer this time, and started immediately. She kept saying, "I want to go home!". She didn't want any part of Erin, so I'm guessing she's not used to men. She let me hold her and we took out her new Winnie the Pooh jigsaw puzzle. That didn't exactly make her happy, but she stopped sobbing. She really liked the pink backpack with lace on it. She said, "I will take this back home with me." :-) She finally accepted me holding her. When I tried to set her in between me and Erin for our official photo, she didn't like that. But on the way to the hotel she started to get used to the idea.
She was very very passive yesterday. -Mostly just sitting still and thinking. We came up to the room to drop some things off, she didn't move from where we sat her.
At the restaurant, she also didn't use chopsticks! I guess kids just don't learn that. Hmmm. In fact, she may not be used to feeding herself at all. Her technique was to scoot the food over to the edge of the plate and lean in and pick it up with her mouth. (Granted, she was sitting low in the chair so the edge of the plate was close to mouth level. No booster seats around....) This contributes to my theory that things have been done "to" her and not "with" her. The Chinese generally have a different attitude towards handicapped people. Maybe part of that attitude is that they can't do things for themselves. She will have to learn differently in our house. :-) But for now, we're just getting to know what she can and can't do. She ate o.k. at lunch. We went to a fancy Chinese place. She ate almost 2 bowls of rice and fruit. During lunch she was looking very sleepy. I can only imagine the flood of emotions that kept her from sleeping the night before. The orphanage workers all said she was so excited that we were coming. She was supposedly chattering away to them about us and riding on an airplane. We didn't see any of that, but we believe them. It's one thing to want a family and a Mama and a Baba. It's another thing to see them in real life and realize your whole existence is about to change! At lunch there were a few silent tears. :-( We thought she was pretty tired, so we brought her and X both up to the hotel room for a nap. I don't know if she slept very much. I know she was faking it at the beginning and the end. :-D But that's o.k. She got some rest.
After nap time, they discovered the flashlights. There was one in the hotel room, and Erin had an LED one. She was shining the LED one on the wall or ceiling and AS was trying to grab it or stomp on it. He was being intentionally silly for her. She was laughing so hard! That was the first time we'd gotten a smile. She really liked playing with the boys. She still didn't want much to do with Erin, but she sat in my lap while she played. Later we got down in the floor and colored a little bit. We worked her puzzle again. We ended up ordering room service for supper. She had spaghetti, and ate quite a lot. She also ate some fries off of someone else's plate.
At bedtime she went right to sleep. Well, at least it seems so. Maybe I was asleep first....
She hasn't actually said any words to us yet. We read in her profile that it took a long time for her to start talking at the orphanage. So silence is probably part of her coping with what's going on.
Today at lunch we went to a buffet. Erin was holding her and helping with her plate. He asked her in Chinese (!) "yao bu yao?" which is the normal way of asking "do you want this or no?". She wouldn't SAY "Yao" (I want it), but she mouthed the word silently. :-) By lunch time she had decided that maybe Daddy is o.k. He sat in the floor with her and played lots of silly games and made funny faces with her. She was laughing pretty hard. She may even prefer him to me by now. :-) There are several American families here for adoption that are staying in our hotel. One of the other Moms (who has adopted here 4 times) was showing her mother AB and Erin playing today and said, "See, I told you that 24 hours makes such a huge difference!". :-)
I really think she is like a delicate flower that just hasn't bloomed yet. I can see hints of potential and I can't wait to really get to know her once she feels more comfortable with us. But she is soooo quiet!! I told Erin that it would be easy to forget to pay attention to her. X never lets you forget he's around. If you're not playing with him, he'll come climb on you!
Today, AB starting moving around the room on her own. She still hasn't made her way to the potty on her own. (We've been taking her every few hours.) She can climb in and out of the wheel chair on her own. The beds are a little high for her to climb up on, but she gets down and crawls around on the floor. I think she needs to develop more tummy muscles, because she slouches in the chair a lot. Maybe we're just not giving her enough support. These will be questions for the physical therapists. The stiffness in her body is mostly in her hips. When I pick her up, she has a hard time sitting on my hip like I'm used to carrying a kid. Once, I gently forced her legs apart enough to do that and she giggled like riding that way was ticklish. (?) She can walk pretty decently when holding on. Even H can help her walk. I think she'd be fine with a walker around the house and a wheelchair for long outings. Here, we've mostly been carrying her. (More bonding that way.)
The pants that I brought her are too short. I didn't bring any winter shirts for her, so tomorrow our big excursion is to walk 15 min. down the street to Wal-mart and get her some clothes. She's probably happy that we haven't tried to change her clothes anyway. She has been very possessive of the necklace we sent her in her care package. It has the characters for Mother on it. She had to take it off today to get her passport picture made, so she's not smiling in that picture. As soon as we picked her back up she wanted that necklace back on.

X is handling the new addition fairly well. I think they will have a love/hate relationship. When we first met her, he came over and was rubbing her hand while she cried. It was sooooooo sweet!!! Then he went and got his favorite toy (the truck) and brought it to her. He wants to show her everything and do things for her. Sometimes he volunteers to share with her, and other times he hates being told that something is hers and not his. He stays in her business a lot. It's not easy to distract him, because there is a limit to how many cool toys we brought with us. I told the other moms that the hardest part about this trip is entertaining this age group in hotel rooms for 3 weeks!! (One of the other couples is adopting 2 under the age of 2!! More power to 'em!) I've got 2 inflatable pirate swords that I'm holding in reserve for our next stop. We may end up being there for 11 days!! The guide generally has something for us to do for about 2 hours a day. The rest of the time, we're pretty much hanging out in the hotel room. Overall that's o.k., because it gives us plenty of time to play together and observe what the new kids are like.


November 29, 2012

Well, we are making slow but steady progress. :-) AB likes us and is playing all the time. She is full of laughter and smiles. She still isn't talking to us much. She did say a few words to me yesterday when we were playing. She talks to X some, but not a lot. Today they were hiding in the closet playing "Wo men bu zai" i.e. "We're not here!" This, if you didn't know, is the funniest game ever invented! What you do, is hide in the closet and yell, "We're not here!" then Mom says, "You're not there?" and you say, "yep." Then Mom gets sad and you pop out and yell "AHHHHH!" and then laugh until you almost cry and start over. Today when they were in the closet AB was the one saying "We're not here!" So that's definitely progress. (Talking to us through the door.) She does touch me gently to get my attention, and wants to show me things. She wants me to praise her for working her puzzle, etc. She will point to her nose if she wants a tissue, etc. She still makes no indication that she needs to go to the bathroom. Yesterday she was coloring and then got kinda quiet and stopped coloring. I asked her if she needed to go to the bathroom and got no response. But I took her in there anyway and she really really really needed to go! Her stomach must've been killing her, yet she didn't say anything. sigh.
Nevertheless, she loves playing with us, and is doing well at other things. She enjoyed shopping at Wal-mart yesterday. We bought her some new pants and shirts. She picked out a pair of pink jeans. I also picked up a couple pair of cheap knit pants that have stars on them. She sort of sneered at them, but didn't do anything else. She may never wear them, but they're there in case of emergency. :-) When we got back to the hotel, we put on her new clothes. You could tell she was very happy about them. Of course, then it was time for supper and we ended up ordering her some noodles with meat sauce. She also ate fries and ketchup again. But the clothes survived o.k.
On the Wal-mart trip we also went to Pizza Hut. She pointed to the "New Orleans Style Wings" in the menu, so we ordered 4 pieces. She cleaned those bones off! H said they were too spicy for her, so I didn't try them. That's all kinda funny since the lady at the orphanage was sure to write down and also tell us that AB doesn't like spicy food. LOL!
Also at Wal-mart we were looking for straws. They both are beginners at regular cup drinking. We went down the children's cup row and she pointed to a pink Minnie Mouse cup. She was tickled to death to have that thing. Of course, that set X to wanting one too. We reminded him that his (Foster) Dad had bought him one. He is so proud of that, he couldn't say anymore about it. We looked for some other toy to occupy them in the hotel room and came up with a small set of foam blocks. We explained that they were for everyone. They've both enjoyed them, and it's been nice to have something to distract them from the other 'cool' toys.

Today we went by the place where AB was found. The area is under construction, so it looks different from what it was 3 years ago. From there we went on to the orphanage where she has lived the last three years. We learned a lot there. It is true that she was in a special program with "Half the Sky" Foundation. They have basically one floor of one building. Other buildings there have offices or school rooms or therapy rooms. The kids were all outside dancing to music when we arrived. X wanted to be held, and did NOT want me to dance along with the kids. AB woke up from a brief nap right as we arrived, so at first she didn't react much. We (the guide and I) explained to her that we were going there to deliver some gifts for her friends and to show them her new family. We went up and met her 'house mom' whom she called "Mama". They were happy to see each other. The house Mom fussed a little because we didn't have AB dressed like an Eskimo. Yeah, only one thin shirt, one thin sweater (with hood), and a thick coat (also with hood) because it's nearly 50 degrees outside!!!!!! Ahhh those cultural differences. :-D We saw her bed and left our gifts. The house Mom handed out snack box-sized milk boxes to all the kids. :-) Then we went down and saw her therapy room. They had a computer in there with several videos of AB. The director loaded them up on our thumb drive, but we haven't seen them all yet. They showed us an apparatus that helps her stand up. They told us she used that for 20 minutes each day. It may well be that this apparatus and some time with a walker are the extent of the "therapy" she's been getting. There were bars down the hallway for her to use to walk, so maybe some of that was going on too. The therapy lady was crying when she saw AB. But I'm not so sure the feeling was mutual. She was talking about AB, and AB just started crying. The guide said that the therapy lady said that AB can be a bit naughty (more on that in a minute). The good news is, AB reached for me and wanted me to take her away from the therapy lady. :-D (PROGRESS!!) I whispered in her ear (in Chinese) "You are our daughter now. You're going with us. We love you." She calmed down some, and calmed down completely when she saw the videos of herself being played.
About the "naughty" comment...... It seems to be a standard thing to say to parents. I think it's like you shouldn't brag on your kid, so you tell people he's a bit naughty. A few people have said this about O when he wasn't doing anything! Maybe it's a way of saying you like the kid, but you don't want to give them a big head??! It's always said under friendly circumstances as far as I've witnessed.
From the therapy room we went on to the school room. All of her friends were there. We asked the teachers what she's been learning. It seems that she's doing pre-school level work - i.e. coloring, arts and crafts, etc. I asked if she was learning to write at all, and they said 'very little'. In China, kids don't start school 'till age 7. AB was in a class with all the other handicapped kids, most of whom were mentally handicapped. I'm thinking no one in this classroom was being pushed to excel very much. But it was clear that the teachers were all very loving and patient. One of the teachers opened up a huge box of individually wrapped cakes and basically dumped them in our bag. She made sure all the kids had one and then I had to take one too. :-) Our guide asked her, "Where's Dad?" and she pointed at Erin. Then she asked, "Where's Mom?" and she pointed at me. :-D (PROGRESS!!)
We took lots of pictures. Then it was time to go.

As far as adjusting goes, I think she likes us and likes having a family. She just has to come to things in her own time. I don't think it will be long before she is talking to us. She is definitely listening and taking everything in. Just now I let her have a bottle of lotion. She put some on and then told X that it was for his hands and she gave him some and showed him how to rub it in. I don't think he liked the smell of it very much. LOL.
I wouldn't expect either one of them to come running up to you and give you a big hug when they first meet you!! ;-) X is still very shy with strangers! I'm kinda happy with that, since some adopted kids will go to or with anyone - including strangers at Wal-mart. The other day he wouldn't wash his hands in the bathroom at Pizza Hut 'till the other lady in there left.
This afternoon we walked through the park to McDonald's. The new kids mostly ate french fries and didn't touch their burgers. Maybe that's just too much white bread? On the way back we bought $25 dollars worth of plastic toys for $7. X got a new truck and AB got a ribbon on a stick (a la rhythmic gymnastics). We had to set her up on Erin's shoulders so she had enough height to use it.
When we got back, we went outside and blew bubbles. They both had fun at that until they both spilled bubble juice on themselves. sigh.
The big kids are doing fine. They're all coping with the boredom in their own way. - Mostly watching t.v. or playing video games. O has taken a bath everyday (so you KNOW he's bored!) H is frustrated that she can't get wifi here, so she can't surf the 'net on her Kindle like she could at the last hotel. They all take turns playing with the new kids. AB and AS are playing and laughing now and X is playing with his new truck, old truck and blocks.
Tomorrow we fly to Guangzhou to start the process for U.S. visas. We're hoping we can apply for their Singapore visas online and save staying in the hotel there over next weekend. I'm really tired of hotel rooms, and we have at least one more week to go. grrrrr. Still have the pirate swords in reserve, so it hasn't gotten too bad yet......

6 December 2012


On the Good news side:

1. When the kids get the right amount of sleep life is more pleasant all the way around.
2. They have been getting good sleep lately. :-)
3. X is figuring out that we mean it when we say something and his battles are getting shorter already.
4. The U.S. visa process went smoothly, and they have until May 30th to enter the U.S. They will become U.S. citizens automatically at the border.
5. We got them both in the bathtub!!! Woo-Hoo! I put AB in, and though she didn't really understand it (she kept holding her hands up for me to dry off!), she didn't cry or complain (or laugh, which is sometimes a complaint). So I suggested we let X see what was going on. He smiled, and when I suggested he could join her, he started peeling off clothes. We gave them a couple of our 'bowling pins' (aka empty water bottles) to play with. They had a great time. Afterwards, I had to keep herding AB out of there by telling her she could have another bath on Saturday. :-) They both REALLY needed baths. They smell so good now!! (There was a free bottle of Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo in the hotel. Yes, they do a LOT of business with adoptive families in this hotel.) We didn't know this, but many kids with CP have night sweats. We haven't noticed her being sweaty in her sleep or waking up sweaty, but sometimes during the day she just breaks out in a serious drencher. Once she was sitting on the bed looking at books and boom! she needed a towel. So, maybe I didn't realize how bad her hair needed to be washed. I appreciate it now.


On the Not as good news side:

1. We couldn't get the Singapore visas online, so we're stuck here until Tuesday. :-( I tried really hard not to be depressed about that. I mean, after all, I'm in a 5 star (for China) hotel...... [That we're paying for!] There are worse places to be stuck! The problem online was that the service was only available for citizens or permanent residents. Ah well. We had to wait for the U.S. Consulate to return the kids' passports and today we took the passports down to the Singapore Consulate to start that process. It takes 3 business days and they're not open on Saturday. grrrr. We had been pretty hacked off with AWAA for not getting our U.S. visa appointment on Monday (like the other AWAA family here) so that we could've been done on Friday. BUT then we found out that Tuesday was the earliest we could do it because our new kids are both over the age of 2. (t.b. test on Saturday, had to wait 'till Monday for the results and then the report to reach the consulate on Tuesday) So no reason to be angry with AWAA.

2. My cold/sore throat is back. Ugh. I think it's partly the temperature change (they had a cold front come through here) and partly that there's so much cigarette smoke and smog that my system can't handle it.


In other news (neither good nor bad, just regular).....

Since our last update we've been to a local 'temple', which was more of a Family's 'home place' where they meet up on big holidays to worship their ancestors. It's actually more like a spread out museum. Even the little kids enjoyed looking at the paintings and sculptures. AB picked out a $2 necklace that she instantly wanted to wear (had to take off the mother/daughter one I'd sent her - o.k. my feelings were a little hurt that it could be replaced so easily!).
We went to a bigger store and I bought a pretty tea set and some traditional looking Chinese clothes for the new kids.

Monday morning and Tuesday morning we had to go for U.S. visa things. Monday we went to recheck their t.b. tests, which were fine. Mostly we sat on the private bus and waited for the other AWAA family to be done with their visa appointment. :-( Tuesday was the day we applied for visas. That went smoothly. Our guide picked up the passports for us from the Consulate on Wednesday, which meant we had a free day. We ended up sleeping late, eating breakfast late, eating lunch late, and skipping supper for the most part.

Today we got to the Singapore Consulate when they opened. We had to take a taxi, because after the U.S. visas were complete we no longer have a guide and driver. I'm still a little irked by that, but Erin says, 'Well, if they'd charged me for it and we didn't end up using it, I'd be more angry'. I guess. But it felt a little like, "Well, this is when you're supposed to be done, so good luck! Hope that Singapore thing works out for you!" It's not like we chose to stay here for vacation or something. :-P Anyway, we had no trouble with the Singapore Consulate. Erin will go back on Monday afternoon to pick up the passports, then we are free to go!! Woo-hoo!

We do have adjoining rooms here. The big kids are in the other room, and the little kids are in with us. The beds are considered "full-sized" but are really glorified twin beds. AS and O struggle to fit on one. We have a King-sized bed. AB is sleeping on a chair (it's better than you think - I'll have to send a picture), and X is in a pack n' play provided by the hotel. I wasn't sure he'd go for that, but O (bless him!) jumped in it and pretended to sleep and so X decided it was the 'cool' bed. Hurray!
There are some shops and restaurants in the hotel. There's a 7-11 next door, so that's handy. There's a barren mall across the street - but it has a Subway (restaurant).
The hotel has a spa with a hot tub, steam room, and sauna in each of the dressing rooms. I've been down there hoping the steam will do something for my sinuses. :-)

Today we went down the street to a big park. (Again, 'park' here isn't the same as in the U.S.) There was a big lake where you could rent paddle boats, places where senior citizens were doing concerts, playing badminton, hackeysack, or doing tai chi or a fan dance. We saw one group playing badminton in a tai chi style. It was the most graceful badminton I've ever seen. Another guy in that group was playing lying down, or one arm under his leg. Some were playing with two racquets. We stopped and blew bubbles for a while. We bought some China flags and one of those battery-operated fishing games for kids. (Not a good purchase. It's cheap and too difficult for the little ones to do.) We went on around and fed the fish. There were so many Koi in there that some of the fish ended up out of the water during the feeding frenzy. So many fish were swimming up to get the food, that the ones on top had to flop around on top of the pile to get back in the water! Crazy. The weather was perfect today - about 69 degrees. This was our first day in Guangzhou without both cold and rain.

We've been inventing ways to entertain ourselves. We have some water bottles for 'bowling', we used X's ball to have a family free-throw contest. Each person had to be one body length back from the trashcan. I won. :-D Today, I used the hotel room sewing kit to teach the big kids how to sew on a button. There were enough needles and buttons for everyone to sew one. The only channels on the t.v. that any of us will watch are the National Geographic Channel and Discovery. So even I am getting a little tired of The Dog Whisperer. Luckily I downloaded some good ABC apps for the ipad. The little kids like that. The big kids try to keep their games charged or talk Erin into getting off the laptop so they can play online. The only time I've been on the laptop this trip I've spent doing these updates. (Currently the boys and AB are all downstairs at the playground.)
I've been taking one kid each day out to do something to kill a little time. H and I went shopping at the hotel next door. They have a couple of little trinket shops. AS and I went for McFlurries. O also wanted to shop. I'm planning to take AB for a manicure tomorrow since we never found fingernail polish to do at home. I don't know if she will like the attention from a stranger, or be too shy to go through with it. I'm not sure what X and I will do.

Tomorrow night we are signed up for a River Cruise. I don't know and don't care where it goes. There's a buffet dinner involved. It will get us out of this room for several hours. Hooray!

We may yet get adventurous enough to try taking the whole family on the subway to the zoo or some other tourist spot. But it is intimidating when we don't know the area, can't read the signs much, and have a wheelchair with no wheelchair access. Also, to take the whole family by taxi would require 2 taxis. Not ruling it out, but we'll see....


December 11, 2012 (by Erin)

Today's update will have a slightly different style than previous ones. Sheri's updates are like American meals--when you're done, you push back from the table, move slowly, and take some time to digest everything you've overconsumed. My updates are more like French nouvelle cuisine--you say to yourself, "What is this? And why did he.....?" as you spread out your hands in helpless confusion, wondering how the chef could have spend so much time to deliver so little substance. Bon appetit, y'all.

We will fly out of China for Singapore today, arriving in Singapore in the early evening. The most uncertain step in our trip logistics, for me, was whether the new kids' Singapore visas would be processed on time. The American consulate has a pretty well-greased process for working with adoptees returning to the States, but you can't even make an appointment at the Singapore consulate. Just show up. Since the "adopt and go to Singapore" route isn't well-travelled, we were concerned that there might be some hold-ups we didn't know about, or some required paperwork we didn't have. But we showed up at the consulate with all the paperwork we own, and the visas came out exactly three business days later, as advertised, and so we're clear to fly back to Singapore.
We had been hoping to get out and do some things in Guangzhou over the weekend. (The "three business days" in the last sentence were Thurs/Fri/Mon, alas.) However, over the last few days Sheri has been developing a bad head cold or something, and so she has stayed in bed not moving or eating much. So we didn't do as much as we had planned, and your last update is coming from me. This is not a great tourist city anyway, but there were a couple of minor things we could have seen. Everyone is more than ready to get back to home base again, although making the flight with 5 kids, 1.25 functional adults, and approximately 43 tons of luggage will be more challenging than I had hoped. But it will all work out, if perhaps a bit slower than normal. I feel much better about flying Singapore Air than the regional carriers we've used in-country here, so that's something.
More details after we get back, and your regular historian gets back on the job.


December 12, 2012


I'm doing well enough to sit and type during nap time. I was really really sick. ugh. My fever went as high as 102. Erin (BLESS HIM!!!) went and found a (Chinese) pharmacy and managed (with gestures and their broken English) to get antibiotics and decongestant. I'd been taking max dosage of Sudafed around the clock, but it wasn't putting a dent in it. I don't know how I made it through the trip, but it's been a miserable 4 days! Yesterday I ate a little bit on the plane and managed to drink an entire bottle of water. Today I've had some soup and drank a lot. I think I'm getting over the dehydration, but still need to eat more. (Everything tastes like cardboard when you can't taste it.) It is SOOOOOOO good to be home!!!!!!! :-D I was planning to go to the Dr. when we got home, but my fever is down to 99, so I think the antibiotics are slowly working.

X kept wanting me to play with him and I told him in Chinese that I wanted to play with him, but I was sick. He gave me the pity look. Awww.
They both were really good, and Erin did a great job taking care of all 5. He had to carry AB everywhere in the airport (of course our departure gate AND arrival gate were the last one down the hallway - sigh). The kids were happy with the video systems on the airplane. But I think they were both a little stressed about coming to Singapore. AB vomited right as the plane landed. I grabbed an airsickness bag, but the STUPID !@#$%(# thing was sealed at the top. If you're not actually in the situation where you NEED an airsickness bag, you might take the time to read the side where it says, "Tear across top to open". So there's the stupid Mom trying to open it thinking, "Some idiot has pranked this by glueing it shut!". She got her clothes, the seat, blanket, you name it. Poor kid. She was crying. I don't know if she was crying because she was physically uncomfortable, or ashamed, or afraid we'd fuss at her or what. We rode around China a lot with her in a van, and never saw that, so I don't know, but I think it might be stress induced at least a little. She didn't eat anything on the plane that she hadn't had before. Today we took them to the super store (groceries and clothes) and she almost did it again. She started crying and was covering her mouth. Erin pulled into a parking spot real fast and stopped and she was fine. She was o.k. coming home. But think about it, she had no idea where we were going or what was going to happen to her when we got there. I told her we were going to the store, but I think deep down she's still pretty anxious about being in a new place.

We bought them some more clothes and some Singapore appropriate shoes. AB is definitely your pink girl! X doesn't seem to prefer one color over another. He is AS's biggest fan. He wanted to get into the Lego's when we got here, and I pulled out a freebie Lego airplane that I'd gotten somehow. I asked AS to put it together for him. You'd think we'd given him solid gold. He was literally skipping across the den and giggling. He also liked seeing his picture on the wall.
AB recognized her bed from the photo we'd sent her. She really likes that. They both figured out how to ride this toy I'd bought. (You sit on it with your feet propped up and turn the handles slowly back and forth to make it go.) I think AB really enjoyed being able to move around so easily. X had a hard time sharing it, but that's a 3 y.o. for ya. AB also liked the decorations we'd put up, particularly the sign that H had made. It had rainbows and cats and other girly things on it. She is much more girly than H. She likes her 'bling'. We could only find a few acceptable wardrobe items that were not pink!

December 15, 2012

Well, to wrap up the blog.....

The new kids are continuing to figure out how life works around here. EVERY THING is NEW! Each object they find they have to show to everyone else. Look! A Wii remote!! If you push the buttons the lights come on!! Cool! Look! Post-it Notes! etc. etc. I'm sure that will wind down soon. We're enjoying having them and playing with them. AB is a whiz at jigsaw puzzles! X is going to fit right in with all the boy things around here. There are still plenty of things that need to get worked out, and doctor's visits that need to start next week, but I'm in no rush to start putting them through all of that. The Social Worker comes on Monday to do our first Post-Placement report. China requires reports at one month, 6 months, 3 years and 5 years. I don't blame them. They want to make sure the kids are doing well. The funny part to me is that because of the timing, the report will be done one week after we got home. Erin points out that we will have had X for a month by then and AB for 3 weeks. But I don't know how much adjusting they did in all of those hotel rooms!

The rest of us are thrilled to be back home. The antibiotics are continuing to work on my sinus infection and today I almost feel like a normal human being! :-D Erin has taken the two older boys to soccer. Later I plan to take the older ones to see The Hobbit and do a little Christmas shopping.

Japan

O.k. This trip to Japan started off very differently than how it ended up……

To start with, my Mandarin teacher, Carrie, suggested that the two of us go to Taiwan to see a museum there. We talked about a three day trip. I said, “We’ll have to go in August so it doesn’t interfere with the adoption trip, and the Australia trip.” So that’s what we talked about. Unfortunately, it is not easy for Carrie as a Chinese citizen to get a visa to Taiwan. She would have to pay a large sum of money and also provide bank statements showing that she had enough money to support herself. She thought that was a little much. So we started talking about other places to go. We finally settled on Japan. She had been there before, and had some recommendations as to what we should do. By then, it was too late to go in August, so we planned it for the first week in October (after the Australia trip, but about one week before we thought we were leaving for China). Then all of this trouble between Japan and China started over these islands. The Chinese are really angry about this and have attacked Japanese people in China as well as smashing Japanese brand cars there. (In my opinion, the Japanese aren’t as worked up about it as the Chinese people, but they’re still not happy about it.) Carrie looked into getting a visa for Japan, and found that it was about the same process as getting one for Taiwan. About this time, I asked her if it would be o.k. to include Hannah on our trip. She said that was fine. So I came home and asked Hannah if she’d like to go to Japan with us. I warned her that we would not be eating at McDonald’s, and that we might have a hard time finding non-seafood alternatives. (This was, in fact, my biggest concern about going to Japan – my aversion to seafood of almost any type.) Nevertheless, she decided that she’d like to go. (I think she has the travel bug that I inherited from my Mom.) Then a few days later, Carrie decided that because of the political situation, it would be better for her not to go to Japan. Hmmmmm. Then I had to decide whether to go ahead with the trip plans or not.
I really wanted to go and see our special family friend, Rica. We have known her for 20+ years. She was in college with my older sister, and became like a sister to me and a daughter to my parents. She is such a sweet person!!
I also figured that this could be my last opportunity to go to Japan. It’s much easier and cheaper to go from Singapore than it is to go from the U.S. Plus, there’s no jet lag from here (only 1 hour time difference)! Also, with the two new kids coming, I might not have the opportunity to travel again for a while.
So, as crazy as it felt to say ‘yes’ to a trip sandwiched in between Australia and China, we decided to go for it.
After I decided to go for it, I started thinking about being the only adult on the trip in a country where I don’t speak the language or read the signs. The first person who came to mind to invite to go with us was our dear friend, Emiko, from church. Emiko is such a jewel. She is a fine Christian lady, and an example to all who know her. She is a great encouragement to me personally! I tell people that she is the most international person I know because: “Her father is Japanese, her mother is Mexican, she grew up in Mexico, met her Norwegian husband in Texas, and now lives in Singapore!!” Her first language is Spanish, although she looks very Japanese. (Not just my opinion, everyone in Japan assumed she was Japanese and started speaking Japanese to her.) I asked Emiko if she’d like to go to Japan with us and she immediately said, “Yes!”. She was so excited! I asked if she might have some cousins or someone that she’d like to visit, and we could maybe plan to get together with them while we were there. She said she’d look into it.
We decided to use a tour company that would arrange our in-country transportation, hotels, and provide guides for 1 day in Tokyo, and 1 day in Kyoto.
I let Rica know which days we were going to be in Tokyo. She was so happy to hear that we would get to come. I asked her if we could go see her Mom, who had recently had knee surgery.
Somewhere very early in the trip we were talking about what we wanted to see and do. I asked Emiko, “You don’t want to see any sumo, do you?” Her answer was the same as mine, “ugh. Ewww. NO!” Then we decided that we would like to do the Gion walking tour (area famous for Geisha). So we decided to name our trip “The Geisha no Sumo Tour”. ☺ Every time we stopped to shop or do something the boys would be annoyed with, we’d say, “I sure am glad this is a Geisha no Sumo tour!”

We arrived in Tokyo about 8 p.m. The tour had a driver waiting for us. He drove us across Tokyo to our hotel. It took about an hour and a half to get there. Emiko and I chatted happily all the way. I don’t think our driver spoke any English.

Our hotel in Tokyo was the Sunmembers Tokyo Shinjuku. (Shinjuku is a neighborhood on the western side of Tokyo.) All three of us were in one room. In spite of warnings from friends and family, we did have a private bath! Yea. However, I must say, that the bathroom was very small. The whole thing was about the size of the shower at Marina Bay Sands! I figured out what was odd about it – it was made from one giant piece of plastic. Apparently, they make one mold with sink, shower, toilet, floor, ceiling, and walls and just drop it in the room as they’re building. The sink was touching the edge of the shower, so you could swing the faucet over to run into the bathtub if you wanted. The toilet had the Japanese-type seat with the rinse on it.


http://www.tune-in-tokyo.com/2009/02/japanese-toilet-seats/


I was skeptical, and a bit nervous about trying the ‘features’ of this type toilet. But I was somewhat reassured by the ‘pressure control knob’ on the control panel. I turned it all the way down and proceeded from there. First of all, the seat was heated. That is surely a wonderful thing – not only in winter, but it’s not bad in an air-conditioned hotel room either. I’m not sure I ever got the rinsing features to work properly, and I don’t want to go into too much detail on that.
As a summary:
1. I think these type toilets should catch on in the US. I’m willing to start the trend.
2. I see why they’re popular in Japan.
3. Asian hineys are smaller than American ones.
4. I did not make a mess or embarrass myself in any way.

Moving on.

Sunday morning we woke up in time to go downstairs and try out the breakfast buffet. We had paid for it the night before. It cost around $30 per person! They had some Western choices as well as Japanese foods. When we first walked in, we had to go past the fishy-smelling section. My first thoughts were, “Oh, this is what I dreaded about Japan! Please let there be something that didn’t come out of the ocean!” There was. ☺ I had eggs and toast and yogurt.
After breakfast, we went back up to our room and had a small church service with just us three ladies. Then we went down to meet our guide and Rica. The guide, Tomoko, got there first and we talked over with her what we wanted to do that day.
Then Rica and her 9 year old daughter, Ayano, arrived. Rica and I were both crying we were so happy. Rica kept saying, “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe my Knoxville family is here in Japan! I just can’t believe it!” It had been over 20 years since we’d seen each other. I had never met her daughter, and she had not met my kids. Ayano was shy at first, but gradually warmed up to us. I think she just wasn’t used to Westerners. Rica said she’s normally a chatterbox. I said she must be like O., and since they’re about the same age, we soon started teasing Ayano about marrying O.
Our guide was also a woman, so we were a group of 6 females hitting the city of Tokyo. Our first stop was going to be the Imperial Palace. We started walking toward the subway. On the way, Ayano discovered that she’d left her subway pass at home! I said, “She really IS just like O.!! Maybe it’s not a good idea for them to get married – who would remember to pay the taxes?!?” LOL. [O. has lost his MRT card a couple of times – he’s famous for not being able to find it.] Rica bought her a new ticket and we started off.
Tokyo’s subway system is huge compared to Singapore’s. There are many more lines, and the map is intimidating. BUT, it works great, and it’s mostly not too hard to figure out. At one point, we got off the subway and went outside just long enough for the guide to point out a few things. I think she was trying to show us things we could do the next day (when she wouldn’t be with us), but we already knew that we were going to be with Emiko’s cousin in the morning, and then Rica would pick Hannah and me up and we’d go to her Mom’s house. So I was a little annoyed that we’d interrupted our trip to the Imperial Palace to see the street where we might could go to get to something that we weren’t going to go see.
We finally did arrive at the Imperial Palace. The Palace grounds take up a huge chunk of real estate in downtown Tokyo! The Emperor still lives there. The public is allowed to come into the East Gardens. You can see a few of the buildings inside the Palace grounds, but you’re not allowed to go inside any of them. So basically you can walk around a nice park, see the moat and the walls (which were impressive). There is a castle tower ruin that you can climb up. It was built in 1638 and used to be one of the inner buildings of Edo castle. The park had many, many life-sized ‘bonzai’ trees. These were not the little ones you can set on a shelf. These were 50++ feet tall. I can’t imagine what it takes to keep them trimmed like that.
We stopped at a gift shop that was owned by the Imperial family. I didn’t want to buy anything there. This is where “The Japanese Conflict in Sheri’s Brain” started to rear its ugly head. First of all, I want to say that the Japanese people were wonderful!! They are BY FAR the most polite, considerate, orderly people we’ve seen in Asia. Not to mention Rica, who is like a sister to me! On the other hand….. I’ve heard enough stories from my grandparents’ generation (in America and Singapore) to feel like World War II is very real to me. (My Grandmother’s uncle was killed by the Japanese in WWII.) I guess you could say that while I love the Japanese people, I’m not a fan of the Emperor. The current Emperor is the son of the one who bombed Pearl Harbor. He must’ve been a baby at that time, so WWII is hardly his fault. But I still didn’t want to give him any money.

Anyway, the East Garden was very nice, very pretty. But by the time we’d walked around there for a while, we were ready for lunch. We headed over to the Asakusa neighborhood to find a restaurant.

On the way, we passed a group of kids and their parents chanting slogans and taking up money. I asked Rica what they were collecting for, and she said it was like the Red Cross. They were all chanting in Japanese, of course, but it was very monotone, and I imagine it was something like this, “Your change can help make a difference for tsunami victims. Please give money to help…..” The kids were sooo cute. By then, I’d already accumulated a pocket full of Japanese coins. I went down the line and dropped a coin in each kid’s can. It was fun. Their smiles were so cute and they all bowed and said, “Arigato, gozaimasu”. Then I turned around and saw that there was another line of kids on the other side. But I was out of change! Oops.

I forgot to mention that the next day was a National Holiday – Sports Day. So we hit one of the most popular places in Tokyo at lunch time on a three day weekend. Oops! Our guide clearly had a restaurant in mind, but when we got there the line was really long. So we kept walking until we came to a small restaurant. We had to wait outside until our table was ready even though we were first in line. It seems like a common practice in Japan to wait outside at restaurants. Finally some people came out and we could go in. Once we were inside, it was easy to see why we had to wait outside. There was no room! I guess real estate is so precious, that they made use of every square inch! There was very little room to move around in there! We had a good lunch. The food was mainly Tonkatsu – which is like breaded pork chop. No fish involved! Hooray!! While we were waiting for the food, I tried to make friends with Ayano, who was sitting next to me. I let her take some pictures with my camera. I gave her some Singapore money. Then I was digging in my bag to see what else she might be interested in. I found my passport and thought she might want to look at it. When the food came, I asked for my passport back, but she didn’t understand. She thought I’d given it to her! Oops. Rica explained to her what it was. She wasn’t too upset. ;-)

After lunch, we walked around Asakusa. Ayano took my hand, and she ended up walking along holding hands with either me or Hannah for most of the afternoon. There is a pretty Buddhist temple in Asakusa with some huge red gates. There are also a LOT of little shops lining the pedestrian walkway. We probably spent too much time going in and out of the shops. There were sooo many people there, it was difficult to keep our group of 6 together! We finally got all the way down the street to the temple. Our guide was showing us how they purify themselves before going into the temple by pouring water on their hands and washing their mouth and eyes. Then she offered me the ladle and wanted me to do all that. I wasn’t interested. Emiko had the best answer – “I don’t need to be purified. I was purified by the blood of Christ.” But we didn’t say that at the time. I’m not sure how offended the guide was that I refused her offer.

So let’s see…. So far I’m thinking that I just don’t like the Imperial family, and I’m offending the Buddhists. Well, that’s probably par for the course with Americans. LOL!

Near the temple there was a specialty bread shop. Rica had promised Ayano that she could have some bread from there. We had to stand in line for 20 minutes or so, but it was worth it. I was still full from lunch, but I sampled a piece of Rica’s bread – I should’ve gotten some! Hannah chose to have a shaved ice instead, and it was also very good. That was the biggest shaved ice I’ve ever seen!

By this time, it was late afternoon. We told the guide that we really wanted to go up in the new Tokyo Sky Tree. According to Wikipedia:

It became the tallest structure in Japan in 2010[2] and reached its full height of 634.0 metres (2,080 ft) in March 2011, making it the tallest tower in the world, displacing the Canton Tower,[3][4] and the second tallest structure in the world after Burj Khalifa (829.8 m/2,722 ft).[5]

http://www.tokyo-skytree.jp/en/archive/spec/


She told us that we might have to wait for over an hour to get in. We said, “We don’t mind!” So for some strange reason, she took us to an office building nearby where we could SEE the Tokyo Sky Tree. Hmmmm. Not getting our message across. So we said, “We still want to go up inside the Sky Tree.” This didn’t seem like her idea of fun, but she was gracious enough to take us over there. As it turns out, the tickets were sold out for that day. One of the girls there told us we could probably get tickets for the next day by going to one of the tourist agencies. So that’s what we did. We tracked down their office in the adjacent shopping mall. They had some kind of promotion that included various free subway and ferry tickets. But the big deal was we could pay $20 more each to not wait for 2 hours the next day to get in. Ah HA! So we took that deal. (For those of you thinking you would’ve just waited in line – the line starts at 6 a.m., and obviously you’ve never waited in line for 2 hours when you could’ve been doing something much more fun – like sleeping.) It took a while to get the details sorted out and the tickets purchased. By then, it was well past time for our guide to leave us, and we thanked her for all her help. Then Rica, Ayano, Emiko, Hannah, and I all started looking around for supper. On the way we walked past a store that had what Hannah and I called “Ducky Mo Mo” (Phineas and Ferb reference). Rica insisted that it wasn’t Ducky Mo Mo, and we knew it wasn’t really, but it was amusing enough to us that we bought some fake Ducky Mo Mo merchandise for the boys. I’m sure Rica told me what it really was, but I’ve forgotten. I think we were all exhausted by that point. The girls had become pretty good friends after our long day together, and they talked us into going to McDonald’s. sigh. I wasn’t hungry for anything, so I just got some water to drink.

After supper, we had to find the subway to get back to the hotel. The confusion started when we realized that there were 2 different stations beneath the mall we were in. O.k., the subway could be a little better organized. They should name them Sky Tree East and Sky Tree West or something. We eventually came to the one we wanted. I’m glad Rica was with us, or it would’ve taken a while to sort that out! We all rode the subway together, but we got off before Rica and Ayano did. There was a mall attached to the station, so we picked up some food for breakfast so we wouldn’t have to pay the $30 again.
From the subway station to our hotel was supposed to be a 10 minute walk, but we decided our feet hurt enough that we’d split a taxi.
This might be a good place to mention that taxis in Japan are outrageously expensive! We said something about taking a cab from the Tokyo Sky Tree to the hotel, and Rica and the guide both looked shocked! They said it would cost us well over a hundred dollars!! Then we were shocked! You can ride across Singapore for like $25. The ride from the station to the hotel would’ve cost about $4 in Singapore. In Japan it was more like $18. But Emiko and I figured it was only $9 each, and a bargain for our throbbing feet.
The next morning, we ate our breakfast from the pastry shop. Emiko and Hannah wanted to take a taxi back to the subway station. So we did. I should mention that taxi service in Japan is awesome. Maybe that’s why it’s so expensive. The drivers dress like chauffeurs, including white gloves and cap. The seats are covered with white, lacy material (think enormous doily). We asked the front desk to call a cab for us and the driver walked in to get us! Also, they have automatic doors. You don’t have to touch a door handle getting in or out. Pretty neat. (I kept forgetting about that – habit.)
Anyway, we took the subway back to the Tokyo Sky Tree. We did pretty well without getting lost. ☺ We met Emiko’s cousin, Carola, who went up in the Sky Tree with us. We didn’t have to stand in line at all – which was awesome considering there were probably a thousand people there. We enjoyed the view from way up high. Tokyo is one of those cities that just seems to stretch out forever. It was such a clear day that Hannah and I had a conversation about the shadow of the Sky Tree being a giant sundial. We wondered if the people in the buildings in the shadow said, “Oh, must be lunch time, the shadow is here.”
When we came down from the Sky Tree, we stopped in a Totoro store. Totoro is huge in Japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Neighbor_Totoro

I haven’t seen the film, but Emiko is a fan. She said the toys in the store were 1/3 the price she would pay for them in Mexico, so she stocked up on some things for her nieces and nephews.
Then we decided to go to the Tokyo National Museum. We had vouchers for free subway tickets, so we thought we’d use those. Well, that was a mistake. As it turns out, in order to use those we had to change trains twice (instead of once) and go pretty far out of our way to do so. Lesson learned. It took a lot more time to get there than it should have. We also forgot to use our vouchers for our “free gift” (we were told it was a postcard) at the Sky Tree. We had yet another voucher for a “river cruise” which we investigated long enough to see that it was more of a ferry. After the subway voucher, we were pretty suspicious.
We did finally arrive at the park where the museum was. It was a very nice park and the weather was perfect. (In fact, the weather was wonderful for the entire trip!! – except for some light rain the first morning.) Sunny, 70’s with a light breeze, no humidity. Ahhhhh! Because it was a national holiday, there were lots of families in the park. We walked down a wide path that had strings of wishes or prayers written on colored pieces of paper. It was very pretty. We came to a fountain and everyone wanted to just sit down and have a snack for a minute. So that’s what we did.
Then we went in to the museum. The contents of the museum were very good. The exhibits could’ve used some work maybe. There were not a lot of explanations in English (though more than in other places). The overall feeling of the museum was that they didn’t have enough stuff to fill up the rooms, so they spread it out a lot. Maybe that was so crowds of school children could come through more easily. Or maybe it was some noveau-art museum technique. I don’t know. I did like the museum, though.
By the time we finished in there, it was time to meet Rica and her family. So we said, “See you later and Goodbye” to Emiko and Carola respectively, and hopped in the car with Rica, her husband, and Ayano.
Our first stop was at Yoshinoya for lunch. This is a restaurant that serves “beef bowl”. Yumm!! Here is a link with a recipe. I’ll have to try that sometime….

http://iowagirleats.com/2011/11/21/japanese-fast-food-at-home/

They have ‘beef bowl’ restaurants here in Singapore, but I’ve never searched one out. Now I will.
After lunch, we settled in for a long drive to Rica’s mother’s house. She lives out on the edge of Tokyo in a little community that reminded me of Halls in the 1980’s. We needed to stop to get something, so we went in the local grocery store. Rica was pointing out things to us and we ended up buying some bread that was similar (though not as good quality) to the bread Ayano had asked for the previous day. We also looked around for a birthday cake for Rica’s mom. I overheard Rica and her husband (Koichi?) talking in Japanese. It was a universal conversation though. I told Rica, “You just said, ‘what should we get?’ and he just said, ‘I don’t know – it’s YOUR mom!’” She laughed and said, “You’re exactly right!”. See? People are the same everywhere! ☺
They decided that the grocery store didn’t have what they were looking for, so we headed over to a bakery. The bakery was a French-type establishment, so the prices were high. But we found a good cake and split the cost.
When we arrived at Rica’s mom’s house, she was soooo happy to see us! She had just had knee surgery the month before, but she is recovering very well! We couldn’t get her to sit down. She stayed in the kitchen preparing sandwiches and soup and rice balls, and so many things for us to eat. I kept saying, “come sit down!” but she wouldn’t. Her kitchen was what is known formally as “a one butt kitchen”, so there was no way I could help. (She wouldn’t let me anyway, and I had no idea what she was making, and she doesn’t speak any English….) We spent a very enjoyable evening at her home. The girls made origami, and the adults talked. We all swapped presents. They gave us so many things! Rica had bought us a set of really nice plates. Very Japanese, and very nice!! She also gave us origami supplies including a book with English directions signed by the author. Her mom gave us cute little towels and beautiful chopstick holders. Rica had to interpret for me and her mom. We talked about how we met, (which is probably a blog entry in itself). We cried a lot talking about my Mom. Our moms share the same birthday, so it was also my Mom’s birthday. Rica told me she just couldn’t believe that a total stranger (my mom) would drive an hour and a half one way to be interviewed by her school teacher so that we could host Rica for Thanksgiving and Christmas. That was in 1985. Our families have really learned a lot from each other since then!
I was telling Rica that because she had taught me how to do some simple origami back in 1985, I’d bought more paper from time to time and done a few more creations. When Hannah was little, I pulled out the supplies and taught her a few things. She went on from there, and is now much better at it than I am. But the interesting thing is that Hannah has taught origami to many different groups of Girl Scouts. So, think of all the people who’ve learned origami from that one hilarious day in 1985 when Rica so patiently taught us how to make a crane. (We were TERRIBLE!! We’d never seen or heard of origami, so it was like trying to teach Ma and Pa Kettle to do something delicate!!!) I also still remember how to sing “Sakura” (Cherry Blossom song) in Japanese. Rica taught me that in 1985 and started my first language learning craze. Unfortunately, they didn’t teach Japanese at my high school, so I took French. But, as I told Rica that night, I think she was an influence on my Mom to let me go study in France. I think mom saw that Rica was even younger (16 instead of 19), and did just fine in a foreign country. If I hadn’t gone to France on my own for a year, I can say confidently that I would be a very different person today.
We talked about Hannah hosting Ayano to come to the U.S. to study someday. Wouldn’t that be something?!! Rica kept saying over and over and over how we MUST come back. I don’t know how that’s going to happen, but it would be nice. She kept planning things like, “You could stay with my mom – she has 4 bedrooms!” But then I’d point out that it’s more than 2 hours from the airport, about 2 hours from her house, and her mom doesn’t speak English. We finally decided that we should all meet at Tokyo Disney or Disney Sea for a group family vacation. I don’t know if that will happen either because of the new kids’ visas, but we’ll see. I’d love to do it!
Too soon it was time to drive back into the city. The traffic wasn’t as bad as everyone feared. We figured it would be horrible because of the public holiday/three day weekend coming to a close. I want to say something here about how Japanese people really take pride in their jobs. I noticed that everyone was really polite to us (and to everyone really – we didn’t get extra politeness because we were tourists or anything). But the tollbooth operators were so different than in the U.S. Again, I don’t speak Japanese, but the gist of it sounded like this, “Hello. Here is your ticket. Thank you very much. Please have a nice day. Drive Safely.” This was NOT said in a monotone. It sounded genuine. It was 5 or 6 sentences. Can you imagine saying that several thousand times in an 8 or 10 hour shift? Ugh. In the U.S. they wouldn’t say anything. Or maybe a muttered ‘thanks’ or ‘here ya go’. Think of the energy it takes to make it sound polite. I tell you they had pride in their job and wanted to be the best tollbooth operator in the company. Lessons to be learned! Seriously, I will remember those tollbooth operators for a long, long time. (Eccles. 9:10 “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” And Col. 3:23 - And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men…”) I’m singling out the tollbooth operators, but this was true across the board in Japan. Taxi drivers, desk clerks, subway tickets sellers, the girls at the Tokyo Sky Tree, etc. etc. Everyone was so polite and helpful – even if they didn’t speak English they would do their level-headed best to help us.
Well, we arrived back at the hotel to find Emiko getting ready for bed. It was so hard to say bye to Rica. She didn’t want to leave, and we didn’t want her to go. We all agreed that two days together wasn’t enough! Hopefully we will get to meet up again sometime soon.

The next morning we had to get up early to make it to the bus stop on time. We called for a cab again (this time I didn’t argue because we had all our luggage). We showed the driver our bus ticket and he took us to the correct bus stop at the subway station. There were a couple dozen different bus stops! In fact, there were 2 within 10 feet of each other. There was no shelter or anything in between, so they just relied on the driver’s to pull up to precisely the correct post. In the US, if the driver gets within 30 feet, you’d say, “Oh, that must be our bus”. The Japanese are much more precise (see above comments about pride in your job). Anyway, we were early enough that we decided to walk around the corner for ‘second breakfast’ at McDonald’s. I can’t tell you how many days we ended up having some sort of mid-morning snack. Hannah and I called it ‘second breakfast’ (Lord of the Rings reference).
The bus ride to Hakone was good. The first part was typical city scene, and we got stuck in a traffic jam for over an hour. But eventually, the scenery gave way to countryside. We went over this very large and impressive bridge. I tried to find a picture of it on the internet, but I wasn’t successful. It stretched from one mountain to the next across a very narrow valley. I’m sure it has a name, I just don’t know what it is.
Anyway…. We arrived at the correct bus stop. Then we had to get on another bus to our hotel. This one had announcements in Japanese and English for each stop. Hooray! Our hotel was a short walk from the bus stop. We were staying at the Hakone Guest House.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g298171-d319904-Reviews-Fuji_Hakone_Guest_House-Hakone_machi_Ashigarashimo_gun_Kanagawa_Prefecture_Kanto.html - REVIEWS

They are mostly a traditional Japanese Guest House. They cater to foreigners, though, so in our room we had an airconditioner/heater as well as a sink. We did sleep on futon mattresses on the floor. I slept like a log! If I do ever get to go back, I would definitely stay there again!
After showing us around, the daughter of the owners gave us some excellent information about how to see the area. She had clearly done this before!! She had timetables, maps, and everything. It was very easy to follow the ‘tourist circuit’ using her directions.
First we took a bus to Gora. Our tour provided a “Hakone Free Pass” for each of us which covered all our transportation in the area. We got some lunch in Gora at a little fast food stand. I think we all had hotdogs. Then we boarded the “cable car” to ride up the mountain. It was a little confusing, because the “cable car” was really one of those incline railway things. When we got to the top, we got on the “ropeway” which is like a cable car/sky tram to me. No ropes were involved, thankfully! But each car was suspended from two cables instead of the normal one.
We went up and over the top of one mountain and across a valley of steaming sulphur (reminiscent of Rotorua). It looked to me like they were mining sulphur down there, but what do I know?? We saw steam coming out of the ground in several places, but no bubbling mud or geysers. We were lucky enough to be able to see Mt. Fuji. Not everyone who goes to the area gets to see it. Apparently, it likes to hide in the clouds. It was very obvious which one was Mt. Fuji. It was twice as tall as any other mountain in the neighborhood!
We got off the “ropeway” in Owakudani. We didn’t have a lot of information on the place, but we just explored a little on our own. O.k., mostly we went in the gift shop! :-P The specialty there is black eggs. They are black from being cooked in the sulphur. The eggs were expensive, and you had to buy 4 of them at a time, for like $10 or $12! Emiko was really against buying them, Hannah acted like she might possibly try one, but I didn’t want to spend so much money on something that no one really, really wanted to eat. So we looked at the eggs and bought better stuff.

http://atlasobscura.com/place/owakudani-black-eggs

I bought some wooden puzzle boxes for everyone in our family. Some of them take as many as 20 steps to open! We were intimidated, and only bought seven steppers. They’re pretty cool.
Here’s a video of one of the designers opening a couple of different styles. The video is pretty long. You might want to fast forward at times….

http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcwebertobias/2012/11/01/japanese-secret-boxes-the-coolest-security-puzzles-for-kids-and-adults/


After shopping, we looked out over a few of the overlooks, including one behind the shop that had our best view of Mt. Fuji for the day. You can only climb up Mt. Fuji at certain times of the year. October is not one of those times. Apparently, the tourists go in the early morning and try to get to the summit to see the sun rise.
After taking some photos there, we went back to the ropeway station and got on another ropeway that took us down to Lake Ashinoko. By then it was getting late in the afternoon, and we caught the next to last “pirate ship” across the lake. This ship was pure tourist-o-rama. But still, it was cute. I’m sure the little kids would love it. The cruise itself was nice. We enjoyed the views of the lake and mountains. It would definitely be nice to come back and spend some time along the lake shore.
Originally, we’d planned to get off at the first stop and do a short walk through the woods to the 2nd stop. But for some as yet still unknown reason, the boat went to the 2nd stop first. Oh well. It was getting darker and colder, so we were glad that we weren’t out walking in the weather. So we took the bus back toward the hotel. We knew we had to change buses. But we got off one stop too early. Fortunately, we figured out what we needed to do (cross the street and catch a bus going the other way) in order to get back to the hotel. Unfortunately, we missed a bus while we were deciding that. So we had a long COLD wait. But eventually we made it back to the Guest House. After we got cleaned up, we decided to walk around the little town and find a nice restaurant. We’d been warned that they closed at 7:30 or 8. (It is a sleepy little town!) Sure enough, our first two picks were closing. We gave up and decided to try a little Italian place. We could see people inside. But they said they were full for the rest of the night. Sigh. We ended up going to “Family Mart” (similar to 7-11) and buying sandwiches or microwave meals. Before you cringe too much, let me just say that convenience store food in Asia is NOT like convenience store food in the U.S. I’m not saying it’s Michelin 5 star or anything, but it’s not horrible. It’s better than public school cafeteria food, for example. The selection is usually pretty good too. I had a fresh Cesar salad and some pasta. Emiko had sushi (which she said was better than any sushi in Singapore). Hannah had spaghetti. They also had fresh fruit and dessert (of course!). We were quite happy with our meal.
We took everything back to the Guest House and warmed up the pasta and spaghetti in the microwave in the common area. We met some other travelers there and enjoyed chatting with them.
When we checked in to the Guest House, the lady had already reserved us a time at the private Onsen (traditional Japanese hot bath). We also signed up for the inside Onsen. We decided after touring all day that one Onsen would be enough for us. So we told the other travelers that they could have our slot for the outside bath.
So….. a word about Onsens……. The traditional Onsen is a hot spring fed pool or bath. It’s meant to be enjoyed in the nude. They still have public ones all over Japan. Some are divided by gender, some are not. The nice thing about this one, is that a) it’s private and you can lock the door from the inside and b) we were a group of girls traveling together and c) no one would know [until now] that we all broke the rules by wearing our bathing suits.
You’re supposed to soap up and rinse off before you get in the onsen. There was a little stool for you to sit on while you do that. I washed my hair and myself and put my bathing suit on and got in. I have to say that it was very very nice. I don’t know if it was the minerals in the natural water (similar to Bath, England, but not as pungent), or just the heat and the fact that we were tired. But it felt really, really good!! Funny thing, though, after about 10 minutes I was ready to get out. I can normally sit in a hot tub for 30 minutes or an hour. This one started feeling too hot after I’d been in and gotten used to it. I’ve never had that happen. Normally, the water starts to feel cooler after a while.
I did manage not to melt into a little puddle until I’d dried my hair and put my p.j.’s on. I slept like a baby. No, I take that back, I slept really well, even though I was on a thin mattress on the floor. Ahhhh!
We had to leave the next morning for Kyoto. ☹ First we took a bus to the train station. Then we got on the Shinkansen (bullet train). That was really cool. I kept trying to film the other Shinkansen blowing through the station. I was standing on the platform and I left my camera on and ready to go. But by the time I saw or heard the train coming and pushed the button, the front of the train would be past me. Yeah. It’s that fast.
Our tour included reserved seats on the train. I really enjoyed watching the countryside go by. I think train travel is my favorite mode of transportation. I don’t have to drive, I can get up and walk around, and airplanes are still kinda scary. Anyway, the train followed the coast for most of the trip, so there were lots of good views of the sea peeking out between hills.
When we arrived, we found our way to a taxi stand and showed the driver the address of the hotel. We learned pretty quickly that Toyoko Inn is a chain and they have like 30 hotels in Kyoto. Our taxi driver brought us to the wrong one! Argh. Did I mention that taxis in Japan are expensive?? Well, we took another cab and this driver got us to the right place.
Toyoko Inn has a strict policy of NOT letting you in your room between the hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. so they can clean. We got there about 2 or 3, so we had to leave our bags in the lobby. It seems like a goofy policy to me, but there ya go.
We decided to head out and try to see something of Kyoto on our own. First stop was for some more of that Beef Bowl stuff! Yum! Then I studied the maps and saw that Ninjo Castle was not too far from the hotel. It looked like we would need to change subway trains once in order to get there. So we headed out. We soon discovered that the Kyoto subway system is the most confusing and inconvenient one in the known universe! They took what could’ve been a decent system and sold it to three different companies. Technically there’s a subway and a train (both of which run underground) and a cable car (no, this one is like a San Francisco cable car). But they’re all on the same map. If you have a particularly BAD map, there’s not enough detail to see that the east west line ends before it gets to the station we needed to change in. (That other station was a train station, not a subway station.) So we were somewhat surprised when the train stopped and then went back the way we’d just come! So we had to find another route. Finally we did figure it out. I found a map that showed which stations were subway and which were “train”. Of course you have to buy a new ticket when you switch from one to the other. There’s no ‘weekly pass’ or anything of the sort. Each ticket was about $2.50, so if you switched lines, it was $5 one way. Hmph. Kyoto could really learn some lessons from Tokyo, or better yet – Singapore, when it comes to subway systems!!
Well, we finally did make it to Ninjo (or Jo-Jo) Castle. It was pretty cool. We got there about an hour before it closed, so the crowds were thinning out. Perfect! We had to take our shoes off to go in. This was pretty much the ONLY historic building that we were allowed to go in on the whole trip. It was very very cool inside. The ceilings and walls were the highlight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nij%E2%89%88%C3%A7_Castle

Click on some of the photos for a closer look. We weren’t allowed to take photos inside. I bought a book with some photos of the interiors.
You could really imagine the samurais and kimono-clad women walking in the halls! I’m sure it was jaw-dropping in its day. It’s definitely one of my favorite things that we saw in Japan. We had to walk a little more quickly than we wanted through the gardens at the end, but it was still a very nice place. By then, we decided to have a little snack and head over to Gion.
At 6 p.m., there was a walking tour of the area that we signed up for. Gion is famous for the “Geisha”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gion

You can decide for yourself what you think about Geiko and Maiko. It was emphasized on our walking tour that they are NOT prostitutes. They are skilled entertainers and performers. Many of them are older. The ones in highest demand are usually older because they’ve become masters at what they do. The customers are not always dirty old business men either. Most parties are for men and women. The prostitute misconception allegedly started after WWII when some fake Geiko advertised to American sailor-boys and lied and told them that they were “geisha girls”. These were actually prostitutes. However, I read online that as recently as the 2000’s, some of the girls’ virginity was being auctioned off. I would like to believe that it is a legitimate entertainment field and that the girls are as pure as they are graceful. But I really, really, really wanted Lance Armstrong to be innocent too. So that shows you how naïve I am sometimes!
At any rate, we did see some of the houses where they live and we learned about some of their training and daily life. It actually sounds a lot like “Memoir of a Geisha”. They are continually taking classes to keep their skills up. Their kimono and hair clips etc. cost upwards of $15,000 each! They need 3 or 4 outfits per month or season! But they do make heaps of money if they can stay ‘booked’. Each party costs about $5000 for one person to attend. AND you have to be invited by a regular teahouse customer who knows the teahouse owner. It’s almost like a secret society thing. I can’t imagine being a “regular customer” at $5k per party! Those must be some incredible parties!
We learned a little about how to tell the difference between an apprentice (Maiko) and a professional (Geiko). We saw two Maiko’s as we were walking around the area. (One that night, and one the following day.)

So by the time we finished the walking tour, we were beat! Emiko and Hannah had no trouble talking me into a taxi from the end of the walking tour back to the hotel. We got lucky and got a cabbie who really wanted to practice his English. He was so nice! He told us about his daughter and we talked a little about taxis in Singapore vs. taxis in Japan. His English was so good, I asked him if he was going to be working on Saturday morning when we would need to go to the train station to catch our train to the airport. He said, “No, I’m sorry. I am not working then. But please, can you remember for me 2 words in Japanese? ‘Kyoto-eki shome’ Then the driver will take you to the right place.” ☺
He was great.
Emiko is such a good travel partner! I was so happy that she didn’t insist on going to a fancy sit-down restaurant for our dinners! ☺ So, guess what? Yep. We ate at Family Mart again! LOL! We used the microwave in the breakfast area of the hotel to warm up our sandwiches and things. This time, we had 2 separate rooms, but we all ate in Emiko’s room. These rooms were smaller than the previous ones. They had the same ‘drop in’ all-one-big-piece-of-plastic bathroom. Our room had the bathroom in the middle of the room and one twin bed to the right, and one twin bed to the left. Maybe that’s not clear, but I’d never seen a room laid out like that. It was clearly for business people whose company was too cheap to get two separate rooms. Hannah and I each had our own t.v., a.c, phone, alarm clock, desk, etc. There was no room to walk between the bed and desk – just barely room to swing your legs down so you could sit at the desk.
The next morning, we met our Kyoto guide in the lobby. (I think her name was Suhiko.) We made a plan for the day and headed out. Our first stop was the cable car station. We bought one day passes for the bus (which didn’t cover the cable car, of course!) as well. We took the cable car all the way to its western terminus at Arashiyama. As soon as we got off the cable car we saw a bunch of cute little shops. (!) We were attracted by a display outside one shop and wandered inside. The shop was selling silkworm cocoons that had been made into little animals or other things. (You’ll have to see the picture!) They were sooo cute!! I bought a little animal for everyone. Emiko also bought several. We could almost hear our guide thinking, “Oh. It’s one of THOSE groups!” We’d bought a dozen things in the first shop we went in! ☺ We went on and walked through Tenryuji temple on our way to the “Bamboo Forest”.

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3913.html


The temple was o.k. The outside of the buildings were clean and pretty, but of the same white with black trim that we’d seen a lot in Japan already. The main attraction here was the zen gardens and pond. These were very well done. It was almost peaceful there. I’m sure it would’ve been much more peaceful for the monks who used to live there in the days before school groups and tourists were tromping through there. I saw a blue heron that I was sure was a statue. It was perfectly placed in the garden. But then it moved. We walked around the ponds and gardens for a while and then walked through the neighboring Bamboo Forest.

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/nature/news-kyotos-beautiful-bamboo-forest

We exited the Bamboo Forest along a riverside. There were no other tourists back there, so we enjoyed a quite walk along the river back to the cable car station. We even saw a cormorant (bird) on the way. The cormorants are the trained ‘fishing birds’ that the Japanese used to use to catch fish. Now they only use them to entertain tourists during certain months of the year. Happily, the one we saw was wild.
We took the cable car back into town and found a nice place to eat lunch. The restaurant was called “Mr. Hungry Boy”. They served Okonomiyake, which is a traditional “Japanese pancake”. Now whoever decided to call that a pancake has never seen what I make for breakfast! It was much closer to what I’d call ‘loaded hashbrowns’. Mine had onion, pepper, pork, and of course potatoes in it. It was very good! I would definitely like to eat there again.
After lunch, we took the bus to the Fushimi Inari Shrine area.

http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Asia/Japan/Kyoto_fu/Kyoto-973793/Things_To_Do-Kyoto-Fushimi_Inari_Shrine-BR-1.html


This place is a Shinto temple. It is very pretty. There are thousands of red tori gates there. All of which were put up after someone or some company made a donation. The larger the donation, the larger the gate. Some were 20 feet tall. The smallest were small enough to fit in your hand and were placed directly on one of the altars. We saw the priests feeding the gods their evening meals. (!) At which point I’d really had enough of temples for this trip. It’s really sad to see people worshiping things like mountains or foxes or trees instead of the One who made those things. I wanted to say, “My God doesn’t need to be fed!” but I restrained myself.
After the shrine, we walked back down to the bus stop and took the bus back into town. Our guide went with us over to the Gion district and then it was time for her to leave. We had asked her to take us there because we wanted to see the cultural show at the little theatre there. The theater was the endpoint for the previous night’s tour. We had a coupon for a discount to the cultural (i.e. tourist!) show. At the show, they did several different demonstrations: a (partial!!) tea ceremony, some traditional flower arranging, music played on traditional instruments, a dance performed by a Maiko, a comedy play, and a puppet show.
My pictures didn’t come out nearly as good as these:

http://www.kyoto-gioncorner.com/global/en.html

I highly recommend it for tourists like me who just want to get a ‘taste’ of the art forms, and not spend a fortune or several hours on any one particular art form.

By the end of the show, we’d had a pretty long, but good day. Once again we opted for the taxi option back from Gion to the hotel. We decided that since we were splitting the cab fares it wasn’t that much more expensive than a taxi in Singapore, and we didn’t want to venture into those subway/train tunnels anymore than we had to.
I don’t remember if we ate at Family Mart that night, or just had some snacks. We were pretty tired!
The next morning, Emiko’s other cousin was going to meet us. However, she couldn’t come until 11 a.m., so we had a few hours on our own to explore a little bit. We decided to go back down to the area where we’d eaten lunch the day before. It looked like there were a lot of shops around there that needed to be investigated. So we took the subway down one stop and walked around. The problem was, none of the stores were open yet! We ended up having second breakfast at the Starbucks (or some similar place) there. When we got back on the subway to go back to the hotel, the funniest event of the trip took place. Background:
It is very rude to talk on a cell phone on the bus or train in Japan. However, Rica called right as we were getting on the train to tell us goodbye before we left Japan (She thought we were leaving that morning.) I was torn between being rude to Rica, by saying, “I can’t talk now”, and being thought rude by the strangers on the train. I went with being rude to the strangers. I thought I might even get by with the ‘stupid foreigner’ trick. Hannah was sitting on my left, and on her left there was a Japanese businessman. He leaned out around Hannah so he could give me a dirty look. It looked like the second set on this page:

http://www.happehtheory.org/2010/09/19/the-bug-eye-view-of-the-human-body/

It was kinda funny, actually. You have to imagine that look with the lower lip stuck out. Finally, I told Rica that I was on the train. She instantly understood and said she’d call me back later. Nevertheless, it was really hard not to laugh at that guy’s face!! We all agreed that he looked like something out of a cartoon! Emiko thought he was somewhat scary looking, but I was just trying not to laugh. I figured if I laughed, he would get seriously mad. We did all laugh about it after we got off the subway and far away from him.
We made it back to the hotel barely in time to meet Emiko’s cousins, Yasuko and Naka. We were a little nervous, because unlike her cousin in Tokyo, these cousins supposedly didn’t speak any English! Hmmmm. We thought this could be a problem. :-P Turns out, we had nothing to worry about. It’s true that the Mom (Yasuko) didn’t speak English, and that her daughter who accompanied her spoke very little. But we were able to communicate pretty well. We really had no idea what we wanted to do that day, we had a few suggestions that we’d pulled from the guidebooks, but nothing we had our hearts set on. I think we were all tired of temples and shrines though! So shortly after we met, Emiko’s cousin pulled out an itinerary that someone had written down in English. Cool. It said something like:

Walk to pick up lunches. Cable car to bus to Movie Park. Bus to supper. Train to hotel.

O.k. then. We had no idea what or where this Movie Park was. Was it in Kyoto? Was it a 4 hour bus ride away? We had no clue! But the day turned out exactly like she had it written down. We walked a mile or so down the street (thus learning that Emiko’s cousin is in good shape!! Even though she’s old enough to be my mother, she walks faster than me!), and picked up some box lunches to take with us. We took the cable car again and then a bus and were feeling pretty clueless about our destination. Finally, we walked around the corner and came to this place:

http://www.pref.kyoto.jp/visitkyoto/en/theme/others/uzumasa_movie/

It was a theme park! Perfect! We ate our lunches after we got inside and then we began to look around. Emiko’s cousin found us a show schedule in English and we started to make the circuit. We had to watch out for her though. She kept grabbing our arms and trying to force us to ‘volunteer’ at the shows. We made it through without volunteering though. Whew! Other than the show schedule and talking with Emiko or Hannah – there was no English to be found in this place. Hannah and I were the only brown-headed people we saw all day. ☺ But we got the gist of what was going on.
We saw a stunt show that was funny enough without understanding what they were saying. I’m sure it was hilarious if you know the language. Then we saw a street performer-type man who used something that looked like bamboo placemats to do some funky tricks. It was impressive. Then we saw a ninja/samurai show. That was really the first time in our trip that I thought, “The boys would really like this!”
Next we went into this shop and Emiko’s cousin started herding us through a narrow door. Wanting to trust her, but remembering how she’d tried to volunteer me at the show, I was very leery! She pushed me into a little booth, which honestly I didn’t know what was going to be in there! As it turns out, she’d paid for us to all have a turn throwing ‘ninja stars’. The little booths were to protect the throwers from one another (they get a lot of school groups). But you couldn’t see anything at all ‘till you were inside the little booth. We had no idea we were about to do this activity. I thought for a minute she was pushing me into a bathroom, or onto a stage or something! LOL! We all did fairly poorly at throwing ninja stars. After all, I’m not sure ninja stars are supposed to be on a “Geisha no Sumo” tour. But since the title doesn’t specifically forbid them, we gave it our best shot. One of mine actually stuck in the board 6 inches from the target.

Then we went through the “Ninja House” which was the scariest thing we did in Japan by FAR! We went over there and there were signs everywhere (in English even) that said, “Do NOT stop moving forward inside or you could be seriously injured.” Uh…. Do we want to do this?!? That’s about all the instructions that we could understand. But we went inside anyway. They did a brief introduction in Japanese. We managed to figure out that this was a puzzle house and we were going to need to figure out how to get out of each room. They let us out of the demo room in groups of 3 or 4. We heard screaming coming from inside the house and we’re thinking, “Are we going to get hurt?”. When it was our turn, we went through with no problems. It wasn’t too hard to spot the hidden exits because they were more worn than the panels around them. It was fun, and I’d recommend it – especially now that YOU know it’s safe. At one point, we turned a corner and had to walk on those mats that they used to put down for gym class. I thought, “Oh, here we go. They’re expecting us to fall in this part. Great!”. But either they had pity on us and didn’t jump out and scare us, or the mats are part of the bluff. We made it through just fine.
After that, we walked around and looked at some of the museums they have there. We also watched a street show about sword fighting.
After the movie park, we took the bus/cable car/train back over to the east side of town near Gion. Emiko’s cousin knew a restaurant to take us to. It was up on the 14th floor or so. We got a corner booth. It was a very interesting restaurant, because it was very traditional and yet very modern at the same time. Each table had sliding doors for privacy (we have no idea how many people were in the restaurant – we couldn’t see inside any of the booths). Once you open the door, you have to step down to the floor. It’s designed so that you feel like you’re sitting at a traditional table on the floor, but there’s enough space under the table that you’re actually sitting in a ‘normal’ western-type position. We ordered our food on a tablet-type device. The menu had pictures and it was easy to use. The specialty of the restaurant was yakitori, which was lots of different types of meat-on-a-stick. Anytime we wanted more of something, we just touched it and a few minutes later a waiter would slide open our door and present it to us. All of the waiters and waitresses had to kneel on the floor at the entrance to our booth, which also made it feel very traditional. Our corner booth had two glass walls/windows. Emiko’s cousin didn’t like sitting on the outside, so I volunteered. It was similar to the feeling I had in Auckland when I stepped out on the glass floor in the Sky Tower. The view of Gion was great! We sat there and enjoyed our meal as the sun went down. It was a perfect ending to a great day, and a great trip!
We made our way back to the hotel and thanked Emiko’s cousins for the great day. Then we had to start packing for our 5:30 a.m. departure! Ugh.
I did remember the ‘two words’ for the taxi driver in the morning, and they worked perfectly! He took us to exactly the right spot. The problem came on the platform. Our tickets said, clearly enough, “car #2”. So we lined up on the platform where it said, “2”. Then, as the train was pulling in, we heard an announcement that the train was coming in ‘reversed’ or something like that. Uh?? So the train pulls in, and I said, “Just hop on, we’ll walk inside the train ‘till we get to our car.” So we jumped on and the train pulled out. We were in car number 8. We walked through car #7 and came to a dead end! Oops! The conductor came out and we gestured our predicament. He gestured back that at the next stop we should get off and get back on at the correct car. So when we were pulling into the next stop, we lined up at the door and went over our game plan: “We’ll run as far as we can, and then when the crowd starts thinning out, we’ll jump back on. Better to be on and in the wrong car, than stuck at whatever station we’re pulling into!” I was really afraid that the conductor on the platform would see us getting off with our suitcases and think we were at our destination and he’d whistle for the train to move out. So when the doors opened, I took off running. We must’ve looked crazy! Three of us running down through there with our suitcases and shopping bags!! About ½ way, we passed a Western-looking businessman running the other way! He’d done the same thing we had, but in reverse! LOL! We jumped on before the train pulled out and only had to walk inside one or two cars to get to our reserved seats. Whew!
The rest of the trip was uneventful, and we made it home to Singapore that night.
Why is this blog entry nearly as long as the last one, yet we only stayed ½ as long?