More Japan Photos

We're fully enmeshed in the fall academic term here, so we haven't posted much new material recently. Here are a bunch of our remaining Japan pictures from early September, and we'll move on to more recent stuff when we get a chance.

First, a few pictures from the parts of our day trip to Kamakura when we weren't at the site of the Great Buddha statue. Kamakura is also a popular surfing town, though Maeve wasn't quite ready for a long board yet:



The vending machines showed Kamakura-themed excessive cuteness:



On the train ride back to Tokyo, Maeve made some friends, as usual. These women kept saying, "Genki, des ka?" ("Happy, are you?"), and, "Kawaii!" ("Cute!"):



And who could blame them?:



On our next adventure, we all piled into Aaron and Tiffany's Nissan Cube3 and drove for an overnight visit to Nikko, an ancient temple city north of Tokyo.

Here's a shot of the famous 17th-century carving of the three wise monkeys at the Toshogu shrine:



The family unit:



The whole gang:



Tracey, with pagoda:



Auntie Tara with her favorite niece:



Tiffany, Tracey, and Maeve at a fantastic vegetarian restaurant on the main street in Nikko, where the mom-and-daughter proprietors actually helped wrangle Maeve and Rhett so we grown-ups could enjoy our (delicious) meals uninterrupted:



Before we left Nikko, we stopped for a couple of hours at a nearby onsen, or Japanese hot spring spa. We traded off baby-watching shifts so everyone had a chance to enjoy the hot water. After my soak, I rewarded Maeve for her patience by giving her a few tastes of my ice cream. She really seemed to like it for some reason:



Back in Tokyo one of the next few days, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant near Aaron and Tiffany's house that served okonomiyaki, a Japanese savory pancake dish with various kinds of fillings. It was delicious, and we had a great time talking with our waiter, who had lived and studied in Chicago years before and was perfectly fluent in English. He guided us through the process of cooking the okonomiyaki at our table:



Tracey, listening carefully to our waiter's instructions, while Maeve searches for a tooth:



Me and Maeve, after a tasty meal:



OK, some final restaurant photos—these are from Tracey and Tara's lunch out with Tiffany's friend Miyuki, whose son is in Mia's kindergarten class, on the Saturday when Aaron, Tiffany, and I were up on Mt. Fuji. Miyuki studied in the U.S., near Seattle, during high school and speaks English fluently. We'd all had lunch with her on an previous day out in Tokyo, so this was round two for her with Tracey and Tara. Clearly, a good time, with good food:



And Maeve had fun too, though she was a bit under the weather:



That's all from Japan, I think, unless Tracey plans to add more. We had a fantastic trip and feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to go, thanks to Aaron and Tiffany's invitation.