Tokyo Day 1 (Travel)

So back in June, I got word that our second planning summit for work would be in Tokyo the week before Thanksgiving! I had luckily not booked our Thanksgiving vacation yet - some indecision had been holding me back since I had been thinking of going to Disney World. (I had been trying to find something on Southwest since we did have a companion pass but getting them to work on a trip to the Caribbean was super difficult) Charles was super excited since he had never been to Japan and was keen to go. I scored a great deal on tickets for Charles and the kids to join me the weekend after my summit was over.

Come Oct, Charles said he might actually need to go to Tokyo himself for work but didn't know when yet. We thought it might be oct and then it eventually slipped and became the week before my work trip! Charles said there was no way he would be coming back for a week and then flying back there so I rebooked all the travel and now I had to fly with the kids and they would end up missing a week of school.

Travel Day

We got to the airport around 8am ish for our 10:30 flight and because I was 1k, I got to go into the special counter to checkin my bag. This year they had a promotion for United 1ks for CLEAR so I also took the kids with me to the CLEAR shortcut though the machine wasn't able to identify me by my index fingers, nor retina, and finally it worked with my thumbs. This allowed me to cut to the very front of the TSA Pre line. So now we were past security and I was hungry. Unfortunately I could only bring 1 guest in to the United Club so I ended up just buying breakfast for the kids and myself. Status got us into the plane early again and the kids immediately started watching movies....

For the flight itself, I bought some blow up cushions from amazon with the intent of trying to create a way for the kids to lie flat and sleep. They were a bit smaller in the foot area than expected (maybe because we were in Economy Plus?) and then they ended up deflating a bit but that may have been user error. The kids ended up not sleeping much probably due to the flight hours. Christopher laid down but then his feet would keep encroaching on Hannah's space so she would get mad (we were sitting me, C, and then H). Hannah had a super hard time trying to sleep and gave up in the end.

In Tokyo

When we arrived Monday afternoon, it was a super smooth customs line and then we went into the JR office to buy suica child cards. My former coworker Matt was super nice and met us at the airport to drive us to our hotel. The kids were excited to sit in the back of a Tesla. We got to the hotel around 4pm and Charles was already there in the lobby waiting for us.

I had booked a separate room for the kids which was a bit far down the hall from us - I really wished it was closer but the kids were happy to have separate beds for sure. I had very optimistically booked a reservation at 6:30pm at Zauo Shibuya (which was a restaurant where you could fish for your dinner!) We headed there a little early so I could also buy DisneySea tickets for Friday at the Disney Store around there. Luckily I had changed our itinerary so we went to DisneySea on a weekday since all the weekend tickets were sold out already at the store.

At the restaurant, we got very little guidance on how to fish but Charles just grabbed a pole and bait and stuck it in. It was almost immediate that we caught a fish and we weren't sure what to do since it was flopping around all over and eventually fell back into the water. The second time, I told Hannah to be ready with the net but she was a bit scared and the fish kept flapping and spraying blood but it was pretty hooked on so didn't fall back in.  We ended up catching a bigger fish than anticipated but there was very little control over what fish went onto our hook so we just accepted that we would have to pay more money.

The kids did great this day though since they were pretty much awake and cooperative for 20 hours or so.

Looking for a good fish