after a long journey (through san francisco and then all the way across the pacific ocean) …

… we made it to tokyo! in a blur we found our hotel (with a cool rooftop), crashed for the night, and headed out to explore in the morning!

we went to tsukiji fish market and got there just as it was opening up (jet lag helped us be some of the first people there). it was so fun to explore all the different food stands and dive right in to the wonders of japan. we tried a few treats and a few food adventures – august quite liked the fried squid on a stick!

we found a cool park / garden along the water and hung out there for a bit while we were waiting for the pokemon store to open 🙂

moses and gabriel were so excited to explore all things pokemon.

next, we went to teamlab planets – a crazy cool museum of installation / immersive art. it was so fun to explore!

en route to the samurai museum, we made our first vending machine purchases. many, many, many more were to come during our time in japan! at the museum the kids got to learn about samurai, participate in a ninja star competition with all the other museum-goers (moses won!!), and try on some samurai clothes.

we found some dinner on our way home and the big boys had to pull out their pokemon spoils for a bit before bed. what an exhilarating and exhausting day one!
the next day we navigated the wild subway system (ian was such a champ leading us around everywhere, figuring it all out) and found a beautiful park on our way to the viewing platform at shibuya sky.

it was pretty amazing to take in the vastness of the city from up high. soooo much humanity sprawled out in front of us! the views of shibuya crossing – the busiest crosswalk in the world – were especially good … so fun to watch the huge stream of tiny-ant-looking people cross over and over.

we came down and walked that busiest crosswalk ourselves!

and then we strolled through shibuya and past a rose garden (had to take a photo because we were getting close to my birthday, and my birthday tradition is to go to a rose garden!) to meiji shrine.

it was cool to explore the shrine and the expansive grounds around it. gabriel got excited about writing a prayer and hanging it up among so many other in front of the main shrine.

we walked back through another part of the city to get to shinjuku. we saw all kinds of interesting sights on our way to find the godzilla head that pokes out of the skyscrapers because we thought the kids would love that, and they did!

the start of our epic japan adventure was jet-lagged and chaotic and also exciting and fun!