Imperial Palace in Tokyo

Towards the end of last week, I was becoming more and more determined to venture up to Tokyo for some sightseeing. Since our arrival here four months ago (I can't believe it's been that long!), we'd only been up to Tokyo twice - once with my coworker during our first month here and once with an American tour group to Tokyo Disneyland. There are so many great things to see and do up there, but we have various reasons (or excuses, more likely) for not heading up there more often. By about Thursday, I decided that I was going to take the ol' camera and check out the Imperial Palace grounds on Saturday morning. Nicki was planning to stay around Yokosuka, get some stuff done around the house, and play with Josh. As it turns out, I convinced her to come with me.

So on Saturday morning, we arrived at Maborikaigan Station around 9am caught the first limited express train up to Yokohama, where we decided to switch from the Keikyu line to the JR line for the rest of the journey up to Tokyo Station. We're getting much better at train travel, so fortunately the ride up was fairly uneventful, although I was lugging Josh in a backpack-baby-carrier and we didn't have seats, so it was a bit of a strain on my shoulders for the hour-long ride.

When we arrived in Tokyo, we agreed that I would continue to carry Josh in the backpack until we got to the Imperial Palace grounds. Once we arrived, we let him run freely in the open grass and pedestrian friendly areas. In the meantime, Nicki had control of the camera, so she shot quite a few good pictures of Josh and me together. Eventually, I peeled the camera away from her to get a few of her with Josh, too. The pictures are up in our Gallery, with 2/15/06 as the date.

Just outside of the main entrance of the Imperial Palace grounds, between the grounds and Tokyo Station, there's a beautiful fountain park, where we stopped to take a few pictures. That place was pretty fun and Josh was impressed with all of the water moving around him. After letting him run wild for a little bit, we crossed the street and headed for the East Gardens of the Palace, which is one of the few areas where tourists are actually allowed.

The East Gardens were absolutely beautiful. Even though it's still winter here and the landscaping was in cold-weather mode, there were quite a few evergreen trees and ponds that made the views spectacular. Josh was lucky enough to get up close and personal with a few Koi fish, though it looked like the Koi were getting a bit old and sickly. We also took him past a small waterfall and a cool looking tea pavilion, then looped back around towards the entrance. As we were heading out of the East Gardens, we found one lone tree that was beginning to bloom.

As we approached, an elderly Japanese couple was appreciating the view and then stopped to smile and wave at Josh and tell us that he's "kawaii" (cute). We thanked them with our best "arigatou gozaimasu" (thank you) and then Nicki pointed to the tree and asked "sakura desu-ka?" (cherry blossom?). The elderly woman replied "ume desu" (plum blossom). Apparently, around these parts, the plum blossoms start blooming in mid to late February and then the cherry blossoms start around mid to late March. Anyway, it was obvious that this first ume blossom was an important milestone in the seasonal changes, because another elderly couple started walking towards us and when they saw the ume blossoms, they both smiled so big that you'd think they won the lottery, and the lady actually squealed.

Josh began to get a little cranky around his usual nap time and I was getting tired carrying him again, so we decided to call it short and head back around 1:30 or so. But first, we stopped for lunch at a great little place just inside the main entrance to the Tokyo train station. The food was great - I could have been eating a shoe and it would have tasted great, though - I was so hungry. But afterwards, we hopped the train and headed home. All in all, it was a great and very tiring day.

In other news, we didn't really mention much about the Super Bowl XL in the week or so following the game. The game actually started at 8:00am on Monday morning here, so I took a half-day off to watch it. My plan was to take Nicki and Josh to base and to watch it there at one of the big screen televisions, but as it turns out there was no good place for kids to watch the game because all the good TVs were in places that served alcohol. So I ended up just taking the train back home and watched the game here. But on base, we ran into a few of the Oakland Raiders cheerleaders, who came into town as a goodwill/morale booster for the local sailors. We asked for a couple pictures with Josh and they were more than happy to oblige. One of my buddies back in SoCal (Big Mike) is a diehard Raiders fan, so I know he's gotta be envious of Josh. Here's what Nicki and I agreed is our favorite picture from the cheerleader meeting, just because of Josh's "How you doin', ladies?" expression. You can click on the photo to enlarge it in a new window.

To see the Imperial Palace trip photos, click on the Gallery and look under 02/15/06. Enjoy!