Tokyo "vacation"

I'm not sure why I was calling my week in Tokyo with my friend P and our FIVE children a vacation. Should have called it a children's week of activities, or a busy week with kids, or a week of running around in search of things to do with five children. Any of those would have been better than vacation. When I think of a vacation, I think of sandy beaches, bikinis, my iPod, a cold alcoholic beverage, and a massage. This week was no vacation... but it was fun and adventurous and I'd do it all over again.





We had to be at the terminal at 4am for a departure at 9am, where we found out that our flight had a layover we hadn't been aware of previously. Which made our usual 1.5 hour flight into an almost 4 hour flight. And for our layover, they make you sit on the plane. Which was absolutely no fun. We finally got to our destination at 2 in the afternoon. It had been a long day. We walked out and waited for the shuttle to our hotel, then again to our separate section of hotel across the base. Finally we got to our room. We found a little restaurant within walking distance and ate, then went to bed at 7.

The rest of the week we spent finding things to do. We went to the zoo (saw some really cool animals and almost got pooped on by several)a huge park (which had beautifully manicured lawns and gardens, and a dirt playground. The kids had a blast, and were brown by the time we left.)tried to shop but didn't succeed until our last day there, ate a lot of cheap food, visited China town (which ended up being a bunch of restaurants. The one we finally decided on didn't want to serve us anything besides the special, though, so we left and got steamed pork buns from the street vendors.) We were an attraction everywhere we went, like a mini walking circus. We came across so many rude people that when someone was nice to us, we were pleasantly surprised. I got overcharged for my train ticket. Mel got shut in the door of a subway car. P's middle son almost stepped in puke and P dropped the F-bomb. There was lots of "you're gonna get the shoe" going on. Mel backed her stroller into some plates and broke them, so I had to buy them. The kids were tired and cranky. We goofed around with the locals and laughed all day long. Monkey ran into a row of bikes and they fell over like dominoes. The boys almost went on an elevator by themselves. I threw a fit in the middle of the street that was so bad, P bought me ice cream. We raced. We laughed. We drank beer. We were tired. We figured out public transportation. We had a blast. And after a week of being together non-stop, when we got home, P and I hugged and said "So... where are we going for dinner?"