The Abels came to visit us last week. We had a lot of fun visiting with family. I think I need more people to come see us in Japan! Any takers?
We spent one entire day having fun up in Tokyo and first on the list was TeamLab Planets. It is a museum where the people are supposed to not just look at art but be immersed in the art. The people are part of the art. You have to take your shoes off before entering because a good bit of it is through water.
I thought it was really cool. But it was dark and there was music playing so Calista was scared to death the entire time. She has been touchy every since we went to DisneySea. Some of those rides really freaked her out.
Anyway, we walked though rushing water.
Then through a beanbag room. This was crazy hard. Every time you step you would sink down like a foot. I got to do it carrying both Calista and Beatrix, but honestly it would have been a little bit of a challenge without any babies.
The sparkly room was my favorite.
It was hard to get pictures because it really was dark. But we waded through this misty light up warm pool.
Next we were attacked by giant color changing balls.
Lastly we sat in a dome of moving flowers.
Next we hopped back on the train and went to a different part of Tokyo.
A trip to Tokyo wouldn't be complete without visiting a shrine and seeing a huge crowd. So we went straight to the heart with the Meiji Shrine andTakeshita Dori street.
And we finished it off by crossing at Shibuya scramble a few dozen times. It is definitely cooler at night.
Since school started over two months ago Tucker has been going to play rehearsal for 2 hours everyday. During the last two weeks they had 14 performances! We got to go a few times, it was awesome!
The kids all worked so hard on the show and put in a huge amount of time. It was so fun to see what Tucker has been up to fo so much of his life.
Tucker was in the ensemble and had several small parts. He was a sailor, sea creature, Tentacle, and in the chef's chorus.
Tucker really loves doing the play with the high school. I think not only enjoys the theater aspect but he really loves the social factor and getting to hang out with and make new friends. Calista has been obsessed with The Little Mermaid ever since the first performance she watched two weeks ago, and it has been hard to get her to take off the Ariel dress ever since.
It's funny because we saw prince Eric a few times in the hallway or after a performance and he tried to talk to her, but she would not talk to him or go near him. One time she went up to Ariel but another time she wouldn't at all. At home she loves to sing and dance and talk about the Little Mermaid but I think she was a little awestruck at seeing the characters up close. We told her that Tucker is friends with Ariel.
The high school here has a small theater of 150 seats and they were all full for each performance! They even added in as many extra chairs as possible in the back and twice when I went not only were those chairs full but there was no where to even stand along the back wall. It really was a full house.
My sister and family came all the way from Washington State to see the show! I didn't tell Tucker they were coming and drove them straight from the airport to the performance so the first time he saw them was when they were in the audience. I thought he was going to be really surprised and happy. It turns out that he thought they might come, so he wasn't that surprised, but he was really happy.
I made Tucker put this costume on and take a picture with me before a show. He never wanted to come out in costume right after the show like most of the actors do. He said he really wanted to be the first one to turn in his costume every time so we compromised and took this picture before a performance.
Beatrix is nine months old. She crawls now and has two teeth right on the front bottom. She kind of did an army crawl before but during this last month she has perfected the proper crawling form. It kind of stinks for me because now she is much faster getting around than she used to be.
We haven't officially fed her food yet, but she has definitely gotten food samples that she finds on the floor, in particular near Calista's seat.
She wasn't being very cooperative for these photos because she kept crawling away.
Sleeping hasn't changed much this month. I'm still feeding her once or twice in the middle of the night.
After the Castle we headed to the Hakone Open Air Museum. It was so nice outside we really wanted an outdoor activity and this is what we came up with.
There are two staircases in the pictures below. First you go down the staircase inside the black box then walk through a short weird dark bumpy hallway to come back up the light staircase enclosed in glass. I'm not sure what the artist was going for, but the kids sure loved to run up and down the stairs over and over again for about fifteen minutes while I sat down and fed Beatrix.
There were a few fun artsy play structures for the kids. Both were twelve and under so I'm glad we went before Tucker officially became a teenager.
The stained glass tower was my favorite. I could have spent a lot more time taking pictures there but it was crowded and there was a single file line going up and down so whenever I stopped to take a picture the line stopped.
The Picasso area was interesting. I think Picasso was an amazing artist but I really don't think a lot of his work is good at all. Picasso said, "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." I thought that sounded about right. He should have not wasted so much time trying to paint like a child, in my opinion.
The rest of the artwork was pretty much statues of naked or partially naked people. We don't really like that sort of thing and just walked past much of the museum. Again, it probably wasn't worth the drive out there, but because we did the castle on the same day it wasn't so bad. The kids loved the play places though and were happy we went.
