Trips to Japan

Day 9 – more playing

We started our day by going to the World Expo 2005 Memorial Park – they opened up some of the facilities they built for the Expo to the public after the Expo ended. Manaho came along with me and Evan today. Manaho’s family goes to the same church with our family, and Evan made friends with her in our past trips here. Manaho has been to this park in the past, but apparently this is her first time going there by train.

It’s a trip I sort of wanted to make since the last time I was here – the last train we take is a magnetically elevated linear motor train, built especially for the Expo. Yes, the cars float off the track. Hopefully the kids liked that experience.

The first destination once we got there is the replica of Satsuki and May’s house from Totoro. It requires advanced reservations if we wanted to get up close to the house, and the weekend reservations are full until sometime in August unfortunately. We could still get close to it. And there’s an observation deck close by too. Evan was mesmerized for quite a while on the deck.

Another interesting spot was the Japanese garden we passed by on our way from the bus stop to the Totoro house. It was quite pretty. Manaho and Evan had some fun too, hopping from rock to rock.

Once we were done with the place, we moved to the play ground. We could only cover a few areas before it started raining. But by the time they hit the big slide, Evan and Manaho were getting along pretty well. Up to that point, they’ve been shy toward each other.

Soon after it started raining, we started hearing thunder too. We wanted to ride the ferris wheel too, but it not be safe now. We checked the status with the staff there anyway, and they confirmed our guess – they were just closing it down, as soon as everyone got off. We hanged around in the game arcade for a few minutes to see if the rain and thunder would stop in a few minutes.

It started pouring instead. Just as we were talking about going home, we found Children’s Center on the map. Boy, was that a hit. The whole place was a giant indoor play ground. It was a perfect place to wait for the rain to stop, waiting for the ferris wheel to start moving again.

In the end, the rain never stopped. We made a quick stop at the gift shop, headed home on the train again, made another quick stop at a bakery at Kasugai station (closest our home), and came home.

With all the walking we’ve been doing, I’m really starting to feel the tiredness.

For dinner, we went to have sushi. That was quite delicious. Shinsaku, my uncle, bought dinner for everyone. We went to his place after dinner, and we had more fun. Evan was fixated to Tom and Jerry DVD they were playing about the whole time we were there. I had most fun with their dogs, Sakura, Hana, and Jiro.

All in all, it was another long yet fun-filled day.

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