Me and My Girls in Japan

When I worked for Toshiba I started going over to Japan for a week every eight weeks or so to help design the notebook computers. I really liked being in Japan (especially on the company's dime), and on my 30 or so trips, I learned how to comfortably navigate the train and subway systems, read the money, find edible food, etc.

So, on one of my trips, I took a vacation week for the week after the meetings, and Daleen flew over to meet me. She wanted to see all the cultural stuff, so we went to the National Museums and temples, and took a side trip up the mountain to Nikko, where there are trees, waterfalls, more ancient temples, and the original "Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil" monkey carvings.

That far away from Tokyo, it was still pretty rustic, hardly any English spoken or signage, and the modern nutrition improvements hadn't brought up the average height like down in the city. When we got off the train, a couple of businessmen mimed their request to take a picture back to back with "gigantic" Daleen, towering over them at five foot eight. Oddly, at six inches taller than that, I, a man, was uninteresting.

Ten years later in 2003, when Geneva was eleven (old enough, I figured, to remember it, but young enough to be caught dead hanging out with her dad), even though I was no longer working for Toshiba, I booked a father-daughter trip with only kid (and kid-like dad) friendly destinations.

We had such a great time (and since it was only fair), I took Acacia on a virtually identical trip three years later, when she turned 11. And then it was Daleen's turn, four years later as our 30th anniversary trip.

The trip always includes an initial day of jetlag adjustment with the kids' "Japanese Godmother" Takano, at Japanese gardens and historical (but fun) museums. The rest of the weeks' required destinations are Tokyo Disney Sea, the Ghibli Museum, shopping days at "Japan's Rodeo Drive" and "funky town" areas, and a day or two shopping and visiting the technology museums in "Future City" Odaiba.

Tokyo Disneyland is essentially a clone of Magic Kingdom at Disney World (except that nobody in Florida shows up wearing a business suit), so there's not much point to going there. But next door is "Disney Sea".

In the 90's, when Disneyland was considering a "second gate" and was playing Long Beach and Anaheim against each other for concessions, they had an idea for an ocean-based park in Long Beach. When that fell through, the idea and designs went to Japan, and became Tokyo Disneyland's "second gate".

It's a parallel universe Disneyland, built around seven "ports of call" instead of "lands". With terrific rides, and incredible attention to detail, it's my favorite place on Earth. For a kid who grew up on Disneyland, it's an amazing opportunity to experience a "Disneyland" for the first time, as an adult. I don't know how to describe how cool that was.

The showcase ride is "Journey to the Center of the Earth", inside the volcano Mount Prometheus in the Jules Verne-based Mysterious Island area. Across the caldera lagoon, where the Nautilus is casually docked, is the "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" bathyscaph ride, way more fun than our dumb submarines.

Just outside the volcano is an Enlightenment-era castle and galleon with cool historical "science equipment" for kids to explore and climb around on. Perfect for 11-year-olds.

My favorite detail is the big metal fences to keep any stray lava from landing on the pedestrians. The lava blobs fused to the metal screen are a nice touch.

To the east is Mermaid Lagoon, the for-kids equivalent of "Toon Town", except the entire "land" is inside Triton's castle, so it can appear to be underwater. They have kiddie rides and an amazing trapeze and puppetry "Little Mermaid" show, all in Japanese -- except the songs still in English.

To the west of the volcano is Port Discovery, a Tomorrowland on the ocean. There's also the entrance area, themed as Venice, gondolas and all, instead of Main Street USA; American Waterfront (New York, 1920's, with a "Broadway Theater"); Lost River Delta (think Indiana Jones); and Arabian Coast with its Aladdin theme and the Sindbad ride, halfway between "Pirates" and "Small World".

Disney Sea is also famous for the Giant Gyoza -- you can't go there and not have one. It's like a hot dog at a baseball game, traditional and required. They're not available anywhere else, and people stand in line for hours for them. Pretty yummy, too.

Acacia got some "Marie" (from "The Aristocats", inexplicably huge in Japan) hair-clip ears, and she wore them the whole rest of the week.

Including the second-coolest place in Japan, the Ghibli Museum. Ghibli Studios was founded by an animator named Miyazaki, whose movies I'd brought home from Japan and my kids grew up on. Our favorites were "My Neighbor Totoro", "Kiki's Delivery Service", and "Laputa, City in the Sky".

The museum features twisty, fun-to-explore architecture, props from the movies (including the life-size Laputa robot on the roof), and a 20-minute short movie, available nowhere else.

We also always explore Odaiba, a newly developed area on a landfill island in Tokyo Bay. It was designed to showcase "futuristic living", and features some fun shopping malls (one, "Venus Fort", was designed strictly for women (but aren't they all?)). There's also "Joypolis" a huge Sega-built video game arcade. And we love Miraikan, Japan's National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. They have cool hands-on exhibits of nanotech, space, computing, and robotics. Acacia fell in love with the baby harp seal, designed to comfort bedridden sick people, even though she knew it was a robot.

The Toyota showcase and museum is way more fun than it sounds. When Acacia got on the Hybrid-demo go-cart in her skirt, a guy ran over with a blanket to throw over her lap. So polite.

And of course we have to ride the 377-foot tall Ferris wheel, once the world's tallest.

We always spend a day in ritzy Ginza, exploring Hakuhinkan, the 7-story toy store and Itoya, 5-story stationery store. When Daleen was there, she found some terrific sheet music at the Yamaha store, and I got to play a "Silent Guitar".

Side story: Once in a work trip, I was wandering down the main street of Ginza being white, and a pack of Japanese high school girls came running up. Amidst much giggling and shyness, the bravest one finally got out "Can we ask you a question?" "Well, sure." "What do you think of [garbled]?" "Excuse me?" "What do you think of [garbled]?" "Sorry, what's that last word?" "Booooying!" "Booying???" "No, boooyooying!" "Not getting it. One more time?"

Side note: I'm fully aware of the Japanese difficulty with pronouncing some of our phonemes, because they don't exist in the Japanese language. Just like we can't say some of those nasal-y French sounds, 'cuz we've never had to. And after working with Japanese people for so long, I'd actually become quite adept at deciphering what they're trying to say. Indeed, I'd spent, as the only uni-lingual guy in the room, a whole meeting in Germany, "translating" the Euro guys' accented English questions into "US" English, and then "translating" the Japanese guys' responses so the Euros could understand them.

"Booyiying! Booyiying!" Ping! "Bullying? You mean bullying?" "Yes! Yes, booyiying!"

Side note: Bullying is a big Social Issue in Japanese schools. Each class bullies (and badly) the one after it, and each one feels entitled to bully the next, 'cuz it happened to them, so the cycle is hard to break. But, you know, it's not really *my* problem, but still...

"Well, I guess I'm against it." "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" And off they scampered, "foreigner" opinion secured for their class project. I hope it helped. (End Side Story)

We also always spend some time in "Funky Town" Harajuku where Japanese kids come to buy and wear their invented fashions, and also Shinjuku, the loudest, cluttered-est, craziest district in Tokyo, just window shopping and crazy-sights seeing.

Of course, we always come home with lots of cool Japanese stuff that you can't get around here. Oddly, they have almost nothing at Disney Sea that says "Disney Sea" on it. No T-shirts, or any of the other million things you can get that say "Disneyland" on them here. All I could find was this little drawstring bag, with the names of the seven "lands" and their associated characters.

Anyway, all three trips were some of the best vacations I've ever had. It may seem odd to do the same vacation over and over, but I guess it's my slightly more exotic version of the Disney World vacation that other families take, year after year.