Our Tokyo Trip with Pictures...finally

So a few weeks ago, John and I decided to take the two older kids with us to Tokyo this year, as our church branch was going on a Temple trip to the Tokyo Temple together. We extended our trip a few days longer to do some more sight-seeing with the kids, and we left Amelia back in Okinawa with our friends the Kisers.
Since the Temple is only a few blocks from our Hotel where we were staying, we took the kids for a walk by the temple, and they loved it.

After wards, we kept walking north up to the Roponngi District and went to the top of a tall building and got a great view of the city.

In front of the building is this large spider-like sculpture, and here is Ben:

And here is Ben pretending it's going to eat him:

Then we hoped on the subway, and visited the Imperial Palace where the current Emperor lives, but you can only see the Palace from a far off as they only open the gates to visitors twice a year.

These guys help guard the gate:

While we were touring the city grounds around the palace, my little Bella was swarmed by some Chinese tourists who wanted to touch her blonde hair and picked her up and took dozens of pictures of her and passed her around like a doll. She was shy at first, and then didn't like the attention and just tried to hide her face. I thought it was cute and took a picture of them taking pictures, but John got worried that they might run off with her.

(I didn't take that many photos of our trip of places we ate, cause I don't like to take out my camera much like a crazy tourist)But overall, Bella was a great sport about trying everything, and she got pretty good at holding chopsticks.

The next day, we took the kids to Disney Tokyo and went to the DisneySea Park since we heard it was a little better for the kids.

Ariels Grotto- we spent a lot of time here:

One ride, we stood in line for for over an hour and a half, only to have it shut down while we were on it because of an earthquake (the first of many to come that week). ;)
The kids liked the Arabian Nights City and the two storied Merry-go-round:

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The temple of Doom- Indiania Jones ride. Favorite quote by Ben: Me:Was that a fun ride Ben? Ben: Yes, I liked it and it wasn't scary. Me: Do you want to go on it again. Ben: Noooo,, it was too scary! (Trying to be brave little buddy?)

It go pretty cold fast, so the kids only lasted until about 7pm, so we headed back to the hotel.

The next few days, John and I attended the temple with our group, while the kids stayed back with some youth babysitters and swam in the pool and watched movies galore.

On Friday, our second to last day in Tokyo, we headed out a little later that day as we let the kids swim some more at the hotel pool (which is all they really cared about in stead of seeing the city), but we managed to make it up north to Ueno Park. After only being there 20 minutes, the 9.0 earthquake hit. I'm not going to recant the whole story here, so if you want to read it, click HERE and HERE.

After the earthquake, people seemed to stay calm and so even though the earth continued to shake and sway for a long time, they stayed calm like it was normal.
Some new cracks, nothing bad at all:

I didn't get good pictures, but this buddist temple was rocked off it's foundation. The front of the building was much worse, but I didn't take pictures as my family was walking ahead of me.

Here is a video I took of another earthquake that happened about 10 minutes after the really big one. (this time I had my camera ready)


We took a few pictures of things we noticed that fell over during the large earthquake, but went on our way through the park until we noticed everything shutting down, and that's when we got worried about our subway ride back to the hotel.
Some pictures we took in the Park:

This was cool, the sign says its a flame that was kept from the Hiroshima bombing of a man's uncle's house, and he kept the flame alive in his house as a reminder of that day for years, and then like 30 years ago, it was moved here and has never gone out. Pretty facsinating.

These are 600 year old lanterns that lined the park that are lit during certain festivals or were lit for historical purposes long ago. Also very cool.

But noticed some of these lantern after standing tall for centuries finally were knocked over that day into a fence.

This was a kiddie park within the park that was the only thing open, but after a few more aftershocks, this also closed. See how happy and calm these teenagers are?

I didn't take any more pictures that day (which I am hitting myself now, but it's hard to take pictures while carrying kids through downtown alongside thousands of people trying to get out of the city too.)
Anyway, here is a picture I managed to take that evening around 10pm of the kids, finally eating dinner, and Ben was so tired, he fell asleep at the table.

Sweet and all, but not fun to carry him up 7 flights of stairs to our room since elevators were down.

We were lucky enough the next morning to get on trains that happened to be up and running in to the airport and that our flight was not cancelled (contrary to the news articles written), and we made it home safely saturday night, and then was glued to the TV like everyone else as we watched in amazement about how the earthquake and Tsunami and then Nuclear meltdown all unfolded that day we were there.

We're grateful to be alive and are still praying for our brothers and sisters up north who are still dealing with this great tradegy, and help is still needed through prayers and any monetary means.

Overall, the trip was a great one for us, as we binded together as a family by visiting the temple and recieving calm feelings as we went about our week, and of course, that carried us through the city that day and back home.