We went to a special dinner with Minnie. Small kids got to go onstage and dance. Yuri’s on the left, looking a bit confused.
Night parade.
The next day we went to the Tokyo Sky Tree. This is it. Unfortunately we had to take a ticket for a certain time slot, which meant waiting a couple hours. Fortunately, the Sky Tree is at a train station. And train station means mall. In this case, 10 storeys of mall. So we went window shopping.
Well, maybe a bit more than just window shopping. There was a kids’ area we let Yuri play in for awhile.
This is a Zorb ball, basically a 2 meter diameter hamster ball. Yuri’s in there if you look hard.
Looking out the ball’s opening.
Tokyo Sky Tree. Altitude: 350 meters.
I don’t know if Noriko would want this one shared. But Yuri is funny,
Looking straight down. The Sky Tree was so solid that I didn’t feel any vertigo.
Yuri dancing on the glass.
A couple days after Tokyo we went to Nara. About 700 years ago Nara was the capital of Japan. The unique thing about it today is that it has a large population of semi-tame deer. The deer’s antlers are cut off in October so they aren’t too dangerous for tourists.
Kōfuku-ji in Nara. Shown here is the East Golden Hall and the Five-storied Pagoda. Astute viewers might be able to tell which is which from the English names.
You can buy senbei (crackers) to feed the deer. It takes a bit of skill to isolate the deer for good pictures; mostly when they see someone buying senbei they form a mob.
We shared an ice cream cone. This deer wanted to share too.
Back at home with Emily.
On the way home from our last trip with the JR Pass.
Yuri dancing by the train. I wasn’t the only one taking pictures of her; other passengers took out their cell phones!
Front end of a shinkansen.
Emily likes wearing a backpack sometimes.
About to get on the ropeway to go view sakura.