Month: August 2018

pump that gas!  Parents of small kids may know this quote, from Mater’s Tall Tales, Tokyo Drift… if you don’t, you can check it out on YouTube here…. Tokyo Mater song. Because Alex made us watch this so many times when he was younger, it’s something that stuck with us and we kept saying it the whole time we were in Tokyo.

Day one in Tokyo involved a trip that was near and dear to my heart. It involved a few metro rides and since it was a time specific event, and me being the time loving person that I am, we left way earlier than we needed to.  This left us time to get off in the station we needed to and have a nice leisurely lunch.

Despite the fact that we were there for lunch, as you can see from the pictures, the guys decided to get breakfast stuff instead.  Alex also found an Auntie Anne’s pretzels and wanted to get them, but we told him he could after lunch.

After lunch we were supposed to catch a bus, which I had read was going to be so easy- the museum we were going to had a dedicated bus with pictures on it and you can’t miss it. Except that we did.  We walked all over the bus stop area and couldn’t find the bus anywhere, so we decided to walk it, it wasn’t going to be that far.  And really it wasn’t, but it was 97-100 degrees everyday we were in Tokyo, so it was just so very hot.

We were headed to the Studio Ghibli museum. For me, this was the main reason I wanted to go to Tokyo.

Because they don’t allow any photos inside the museum, I tried to get some good shots of the outside.

Once we went inside, the first thing we saw was a room full of the history of animation and how animation works.  They had 3d models of characters with small changes and then a strobe light would come on to create the movement.  It was fun to watch Alex getting into the technical side of animation.  There was a replica of Miyazaki’s home studios, filled with sketches from all the movies.  For kids there was a big stuffed Catbus that they could play in and soot sprite stuffed animals they could throw around.  I was sad when Alex said he was too old to play in there, Mark and I both said we would have done it if we could.

Outside the Catbus play area, there was a door leading outside, and then a beautiful spiral staircase up.

And at the top of the spiral staircase was a rooftop garden, with a giant robot soldier from Castle in the Sky.

Before we left, we got to see a short cartoon that Miyazaki had made just for the museum.  I wish we had watched it before going to the gift shop, because I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to buy these weird poop creatures… then I saw the movie and wished I had bought a weird little poop creature (which is actually a caterpillar).

The boys were nice enough to indulge me in a stop to the Straw Hat Cafe, which while cute, wasn’t as themed as I was hoping.

All that museuming made the boys hungry, and since they were so patient for me, I had to return the favor.  Mark really wanted to try a Ramen place he saw on “food Ranger” and there were several of them around Tokyo, but we had to go to the one that was on the show.

A shortish metro ride and short walk led us to a basement restaurant with a line going all the way up the stairs, which means it has to be good right?

 

I got a level 2 heat (I should have gotten 4) extra garlic and extra green onions. It was fantastic, worth every minute of waiting.   The experience is something too!  This is the place (a place?) where you order with a vending machine, and then someone double checks your order, and finds you a spot. You wait in a little personal booth, a curtain goes up, your food comes out and the curtain goes back down.

If you’re going to Tokyo, this is worth it, make it a priority to try!  While we were walking out of IchiRan, we saw another iconic Tokyo activity, the Mario Kart tour through Tokyo. We looked into doing that, but there is no room for passengers and you must have a driver’s license. Sorry Alex!

This dinner trip took us on accident to a famous place in Tokyo that hadn’t made our personal list of must dos, but I know it’s on a lot of lists. We ended up in Shibuya at the “busiest intersection in the world.” Now I don’t know if it really is the busiest, but at 10pm there were still hundreds of people crossing in every direction.  It was a neat experience to be a part of.

This was at night too, so not the busiest time at the intersection either.

Japan has been on the top of our list whenever we discussed vacation spots.  I don’t know exactly what the draw was, the culture, the food, the history… but all three of us wanted to make this trip. Admittedly Alex mostly wanted to go to Japan because “it’s the home of Pokemon, they will be everywhere.”

A few days before we were leaving, we turned on the news to see that lots of Japan was hit hard by flooding, there were almost 100 people missing or dead. We weren’t sure whether we should cancel the trip, or go anyway and just have a back up plan in case things went sideways while we were there.  We kept a watch on it, and waited since the worst flooding was in the south of Japan, we modified a few of our day trip plans and just stuck with our main plan. 4 days in Tokyo and 3 in Osaka. .

The first day was a long day of traveling. It’s only 3 hours between Shanghai and Tokyo, but we still had to get to Shanghai.  The morning started with a Didi (Chinese Uber) ride that got caught up by construction, causing us to almost miss our train.  I’m a little crazy about time… ok, a lot crazy about time. I come by it honestly, my dad is the same way.  He always told me if you’re early you’re on time and if you’re on time you’re late.  Mark has a much more causal approach to time, more of a you get there when you get there approach.  Needless to say then, that our travel styles are also a little different. I’m happy to get to the airport 3 hours early and just sit in my gate waiting, and Mark has, on at least one occasion, been the person running to catch the plane before they close the doors.  Catching this train was more Mark’s style, while we were riding the escalator up to the platform the train was pulling in.  40 min train ride, lunch in the train station and an hour-long metro ride to the airport. I had the whole day planned out perfectly.

We landed in Tokyo and got the metro from the airport to our hotel, a relatively short walk from the station and we were there.

Our hotel was in the Ueno area and right around the corner from our hotel was a strip that was full of places to eat.  We picked a sushi place and settled in.

 

The hotel room was fairly small, but very clean. It had a fancy toilet,  and a huge bathtub for Alex. One of the best things about the hotel was the distance to the metro. Just about two blocks away, and along the way, we found something special for Mark that became our ritual when we would go out in the morning or come back at night…

A local eye-glass place had several glasses cleaning machines outside their store. And every time we passed it, Alex would insist that Mark get his glasses cleaned (because Mark likes clean glasses and Alex likes pushing buttons). It was such a great marketing idea, if I had to buy glasses I’d go there first.

The next post will be about our first full day in Tokyo.

For those of you who know me in real life, you are all aware that I am not a small person, in size or personality.   And for a long time, I let the idea of how big I was stop me from trying things, or doing things because I didn’t want to look silly or draw attention to myself or my size.

One of the very liberating things about moving to a country where you are an oddity and people are going to stare no matter what is that I no longer worry about trying to fit in. I’m never going to fit in here, so I am free to stand out.  I have a very loud neon pink pineapple dress that I love, but didn’t wear in the states because it would make people look at me.  People here look anyway, so I might as well be comfy and happy.

This is all a precursor to the idea I want to talk about in this post.  Traveling while overweight, plus size, fluffy, fat,  whatever you want to call it.   I read so many blog posts  before moving here and traveling about what are overweight people treated like in China, in Japan,  what are the words for fat so I will know if someone is talking about me,  what to expect in terms of clothing options.  I was terrified. Every one said that overweight people would be judged, people would be mean, there would be no clothes options, everything over a size 7 shoe didn’t exist.

People are people, no matter where you go. Some are nice, some are mean, and most are in between.  I’ve had people stare, take pictures, call me fat when they think I couldn’t hear or understand…. but I had all that at home in the states too.  I think I get more stares here because we live in a “small town” for China and there aren’t so many foreigners here that everything we do is interesting.

As for clothes, I am currently looking at a pile of shoes that I have bought here (in a size 10) that I love and are super comfortable. Now, I will be honest, some of the cutest shoes I’ve found only go up to an 8 or 9 and I can’t get them, but my wallet and shoe cabinet are pretty happy about that.

If you look at the label on lots of your clothes, you will see made in China.  My favorite clothing store Torrid makes their clothes here and I am able to buy them for a literal 10th of the price that I would pay in store. Again, I don’t get an option to buy everything, and some things I still have to buy in the states and ask my mom to ship for me, but I’ve been able to buy quite a lot of cute clothes (including some torrid jeans that I never would have bought because in the states they are too expensive!).  I can’t go to the mall and find something in my size, but so much of shopping in China is online anyway it doesn’t matter.

It’s thickened my skin as well, I used to be so hurt by the word fat.  To find plus size clothes in China, you have to search things like  “super fat 300kg pants” to find skinny models wearing one pant leg on their whole body.    Fat has become a word that is just a descriptor like tall, or brunette. It has exactly as much power as I give it, and I no longer choose to give it any.

When we were planning our Japan trip, I again took to the blogs wondering about what to expect as a plus size visitor to Japan. Again I was met with nothing will come in your size, people will judge you.. blah blah blah.   I will write all about our Japan trip in the next couple of posts, but honestly, I never really felt judged at all. Mark mentioned one lady who may have been judging, but may be she wasn’t and who cares anyway? I’m never going to see her again and I’m sure not going to let that ruin my time in a new place.

If you’re plus sized and reading this because you came across it doing the same search I was, I’m going to give you some advice. Stop reading these blogs, they will only make you nervous.  Enjoy your self, plan your trip, eat what you want, and have a blast.  Don’t let anyone make you second guess yourself. And email me, comment here, send me your email and we’ll talk it out!