A blast from Easter past

 Easter at the Smiths.  Marie wanted to find the fastest way to find all the eggs.

All Star Game

Daddy's biggest fans came to watch him play in the base All Star game on Friday.

Every intramural softball team chose their two best players to play in the All Star game and everyone got personalized jerseys.

 
It's always fun to watch Dad play!

30 Years, Thank You

I would like to interupt this regularly scheduled travel log for some thanking. The serious kind. October 1st commemorated my parents 30th wedding anniversary! I love them so much and am proud to be their daughter. Words can hardly sum up even a tiny bit of what I have learned from them. I know they have testimonies of Christ and that their love for Him and me and my brothers gave them the strength for an incredible marriage. Also, my mom is adorable and gorgeous, so that had something to do with it to ;)

I love you mom and dad, thank you for being amazing grandparents! Here's to 30 more years.

Tokyo Ect. (Sunday)

I love to see the Temple... especially from my hotel room at the New Sanno! The Tokyo Latter Day Saint Temple was built in 1980.  The New Sanno Hotel, a US Military Resort, was built in 1983. which is only a 5 minute walk to the temple. If you are not familiar with  LDS temples they usually have a golden statue on the top of the steeple, hence the focus of this picture. Yay for the awesome entities that acquired an affordable military hotel near the temple! Brett and I got to attend a session and it was kind of cool being the only non-Japanese speakers there and at the same time see Japanese members just doing their thing. I really wanted to see a Japanese Bride, but maybe next time. On a side note, I later found a super tiny Deseret Book around the corner. It was packed with Japanese, which was a little ironic because everything they sold was in English. I bought Marie "Guess Who?" for the Book of Mormon. More out of guilt for being the only one who probably understood the language. Anyways, here is a better picture of the Tokyo Temple:

 However, that was on Saturday morning (i just forgot to blog about it).

On to Sunday....

A 15 minute walk through a residential area will take you to a tiny Japanese gem: The Japanese Sword Museum. Apparently, during WWII some American soldiers who took what they considered "spoils" back to the states, later realized that the swords they took were hundreds of years old, most dating back to the 13th century. Understanding this the swords were given back to the Japanese to then be put in Museums.

Swords. Awesome. 

 Actually it was very cool, but then we walked to the Meiji Shrine.

 

Lots of Tori gates to be found here!

Here is the main court of the Meiji Shrine.

For 500Yen you can write a blessing or desire for someone on a wooden tablet and the Shrine Priests will take them for you. I don't know what all they do, but it was really cool to see the hundreds of notes or blessing-type things people write. And yes, I did say something totally funny to my dad.

Whew! A lot of walking in Tokyo! We are glad for a break.

My dad's favorite. It's just a fact. Look at these twins.

Here is another place where I would stand and half-heartedly narrate what I thought this is for.

My tour group was riveted.  

The Meiji Shrine sits in the middle of a park of over 1,000 trees.

More walking!

"Tally-ho!"

Exit Scene.

If you're a  real fan of Gwen Stefani or fashion, you are familiar with Harajuku fashion, or essentially cutting edge fashion. "Harajuku Girls" can be found on Takeshita St.

Here I am, thinking, maybe I need to be 15 years younger to enjoy this. Mina is thinking she needs to about 15 years older... or just that she has a weird mom.

Classic current fashion. It's like 1800 meets 2011.

I saw the cutest little Harajuku girl in the subway, but no personal camera means no impromptu pictures with strangers. Sad. Next time though.

"No Marie! You may not buy your prom dress here!"

I think we could have skipped this street all together. Mina was raging and my mom couldn't stop disapproving of all the immodest clothing. Again, I think you would have to be about 15 years-old to  enjoy this place. It's weird to think that I may never really dress up in cutting edge YOUNG fashion again, and it made me a little sad. However, while walking down the street I passed two women in their 40's who were all about the young fashion, and they just looked silly. Come on ladies, dress your age and you can still be cool, you may just not be a back up dancer for Britney Spears, but you can still be cool.

Whew! All that made us pretty pooped so we headed back to the hotel for some dinner. I loved the New Sanno food. Convenient, affordable, and AMERICAN! 
On a side note, we enjoyed the Sunday Brunch that morning at the hotel. Crazy yummy and crazy expensive- thanks Dad!

Oh New Sanno, how I love thee!

Tokyo Ect. (saturday!)

Welcome back to the travel log! Don't you think it's funny that I'm vain enough to think people would actually read this? My family doesn't even read this blog. I talk to my brothers every month (ok, actually every 3-4 months) and they always say, "oh yah, I never read your blog, sorry." Which is peculiar because I don't even bring up my blog, they just let me know they don't read it. How funny.

Anyways- ever heard of the Hamarikyu gardens? It's one of Tokyo's beautiful parks hidden in the midst of a busling city.

This post goes out to gorgeous Marie and how she rocked the umbrella stroller for a week. No naps, just burned through every day and was really good for doing "boring adult things" and having an anti-climatic vacation trip that started with Disneyland, and ended with a few subway rides. Marie, you're awesome.

I would also like to take a minute to mourn these beautiful glasses she's wearing. They were 15,000 Yen or $200. The second the salesman offered them to me I literally laughed out loud and said, "you know she's gonna lose these, do you have anything cheaper?"
He laughed back.
Goodbye awesome glasses. I hope you have fun riding the subways where ever you are.

These gardens are an oasis in the middle of chaos.

When we first arrived it rained, and rained, but after about 20 minutes the rest of the day was a delight. And the garden was so peaceful it put Mina right to sleep.

I'm convinced the plant behind them is an Aloe plant.

Here are my parents in a giant field of peonys.

My dad loves tori gates. I think someday I will build him some.

From the gardens we took a Sumida River boat cruise around the Sumida River that edges the West side of Tokyo, and Odaiba island. Mina was all about it.

Marie enjoyed waving to passersby.

And shares an inside joke with my mom. I think she's gotta pee too.

Oh Colonel! How you make everything feel familiar!

We then arrived in Asakusa, home to the oldest temple in Tokyo, the Sensoji Temple built in the 700AD (but don't quote me on that).

It may be old, but it's not against a little capitalism. Here we are at the shops that line the road to the temple. A tourist hot spot for sure, but we were one of very few white people there so we had a our picture taken quite a bit (by strangers). It could be that we were white, but now I'm realizing it was because Mina was naked in her bjorn.

In Japan you can find soft serve ice cream on every corner. And occasionally you can find anywhere from 3-30 flavors. My favorites are pineapple and sesame seed (haha not, I just wanted to bring up that they have the flavor sesame seed, it's ok).

Protected from birds are large 20 foot statues of Gods of Thunder, Wind and other elements.

Infact, usually in pagodas such as this, each level represents an element of the earth.
Thats ok, my parents didn't care for my naration of the guide book either.

Finally, the Sensoji Temple!

It's not my religion, but to each his own, I like to say.

 

Oh Mina! You are shameless!

 

My Dad did a great job of pushing Marie.

It was a long day, but finally our first Japanese meal with my parents! I've been raving about the food for months now so I really wanted them to have a great experience. However, somehow, before we even sat down I got into a fight with the cook over whether or not this was a smoking or non smoking establishment. It was difficult considering we were speaking different languages. He seemed like he really WANTED me to smoke and handed me an ash tray. I kept pointing to my kids and saying "no" or "i-e" in Japanese. His food ending up burning and he was MAD. I felt so terrible we ended up eating there. The food was horrible and I'm pretty sure Brett ordered horse meat. Yikes, at least things could only get better from there.

And that was Saturday in Asakusa!

Tokyo Ect. (friday)

After months of planning, eye-brow-scrunching, and lots and lots of penny saving, on Labor Day weekend we finally made it to Tokyo.

All the nuances and such made it a little over whelming, like subway riding, but all -in-all it was incredible.

It was fun going from Misawa, a town of roughly 40,000 to Tokyo, the home of over 13 million people!

We took the bullet train down (3 hours compared to the 9 if you drive) and it was super fun.

Marie enjoyed getting on the subways when we arrived in Tokyo. Mostly because we were in such close proximity of other people that it was ok to kick them and still look relatively innocent.

However, this post will be short. It was our first day, and on our first day we went to...

Tokyo Disney!!!

.... and apparently it was SO FUN that even our camera decided not to come home with us, but live there instead. I told my camera he would probably get stolen, but he wouldn't listen. What a freak.

Oh well, Google images exists for a reason, so enjoy a picture of someone else's little girl at Tokyo Disney:

But for the record the princesses were white, or of Scandinavian or European descent (Whatever Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast are supposed to be) they were very pretty, and the princes were actually men. The best part was Marie was the only little girl they could talk to because she spoke English! My favorite part of the whole day was standing behind a huge group of Japanese adults (kids are mostly all in school now) and have Sleeping Beauty call out to Marie, "Come here little princess!" She and Prince spent a good 3 minutes codling Marie and talking about princess-like-things. It was so sweet. The look on Marie's face was pure joy. I am sad I have lost those pictures. I hope we can go back soon and recreate that day. It might be hard considering Japan's fickle weather. If it's not sticky humid hot then it's raining. Our day at Disney was supposed to be hit by a typhoon, but it turned out slightly windy, and the weather was great. On a sad note, the Typhoon hit lower Japan and caused a landslide that killed a lot of people. It's not a good year for Japan.
But back on a brighter note, my parents met us in Tokyo that night and brought their camera, so I will spend the next 5-6 posts documenting the trip with their pictures.

anyone have a recommendation for a cool new camera? My birthday is coming up and i'm feeling spendy....