WE WENT TO JAPAN

Somewhere along the line travel has became our family's thing. We had not taken the girls to Asia (other than Bea and Brian's trip to a wedding in Singapore). So somehow Japan was decided on for spring break. Now I feel really grateful that I got to know Japan a little bit. What a unique and fascinating place!

We started in Tokyo.

It's the biggest city in the world with 37 million people and you can feel it!

Brian and Bea figured out the train system – which seems to work really well but was also a bit complicated. It seems like it's divided into different private lines plus it's just huge! The trains run frequently and they are busy. I remarked that it felt like we waited longer to cross a street than we ever waited for a train.

We did experience one super busy train ride – the ones you hear about where the people are absolutely packed in like sardines. My friend who lived in Japan for a time said that during rush hour and on certain trains they have employees to push the people on the train. For us, we piled on thinking it was crazy crowded and then several more people got on and just pushed themselves in where it seemed impossible to fit. It gives me a slightly panicked feeling but the Japanese people seemed used to it and they remain calm and quiet. I did notice signs that explained certain trains were women only during the busy hours. It was all interesting.

This is an aquarium – Bea likes to visit all the aquariums.

Even though Tokyo is huge and full of people it has a calmness to it. I was often struck by the quietness of the streets. It felt very different from other big cities I've visited.

We went to the big Imperial Palace park – it was nice and warm.

We went to a smallish science museum near the park and noticed a bunch of people dressed up – young men in suits and girls in traditional dresses. There were so many of them! All dressed in different colors and patterns. I finally asked someone and found out it was graduation day in Japan.

Here we are eating dinner. There were little restaurants everywhere and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the food.

We arrived in time for cherry blossom season. Some of the prettiest examples we saw were a couple trees that we kept passing near the Shinjuku train station. Claire called them celebritrees.

On another day we visited another big park with a museum campus type situation. Claire and I went to the art museum and saw an exhibit on Joan Miro. Brian and Bea went to an excellent natural history museum.