Renovated playground

Most Tokyo playgrounds have woefully old equipment, but we went last weekend to a newly renovated playground - known as the "100 yen park" - after a family bike ride around Meiji Jingu Outer Gardens. The previous 100-yen incarnation had near-rusty jungle gyms over dirt. It now has clean, safe climbing equip and a long roll-y slide...


...a new swingset and tires to climb on...


...and a corral's worth of bouncy "Rody" horses.


There were even fancy wicker chairs for parents!


A hot-dog stand...


And astroturf around the trees. Not sure if it's meant to protect the trees from the kids or the kids from the trees.

Asphalt playground

When you don't have a backyard, you use what you have for a playground: a flat side street very close to our house.




After a very comfortable May and June, it's gotten into the high 80s during the day; the humidity will be reasonable until early July. Around 4:30/5pm, when the sun is low and Blaine finishes his work, he takes the children outside to ride their Razor scooters and to kick or play "Monkey in the Middle" with a soccer ball.

Sweet potatoes

It's curious that in this tech-driven society, you still find throwbacks to a simpler way of life that you would never see in the United States. Like women wearing kimonos and traditional sandals during the day - and like the sweet-potato salesman.

Last Friday, at a playground in a wealthy expat neighborhood, I heard music that resembled the Muslim call to prayer. But it was the sweet-potato truck selling 100 grams of "organic no chemicals" roasted sweet potato for 100 yen (less than $1).



There's a wood-burning oven on the back of his mini-truck.





For 100 yen, he opened the oven door, pulled out a small potato with his bare hands, weighed it on a scale and tossed it into a paper bag.





Arno loved it and wanted another. By then, there was a crowd.

Children's Castle

Lucinda, Arno and I tested another weekend children's hangout: The National Children's Castle, a multi-million $$ play center near fashionable Omotesando. It's a lot like the Tokyo Metropolitan Children's Hall, but this is the paid version. (400 yen per child, 500 yen per adult - or about $4 and $5 if you ballpark currency exchange.)

The two best attractions at the Children's Castle are the rooftop playground and the 3rd floor art room. The roof has a maze of nets and tunnels to climb through, but the kids absolutely loved jumping into these balls.




In the art room, there is a totally cool, huge white board for the kids to paint on. This would be such a great addition to any children's museum - there's a drain underneath so it must get hosed down every night.




There's also a wooden indoor play structure called...




...and low-tech games, like air hockey without the air. In the home-play section, Lucinda put Japanese dolls on tiny futons.




Afterwards, I took them to McDonald's for lunch, their first-ever McDonald's meal. I decided not to tell them about the restaurant's American identity because I didn't want to make it even more alluring.




In Seattle, Blaine liked to take the kids to Red Mill for burgers, fries and milkshakes, but we haven't found a suitable replacement here.

At McDonalds's, Lucinda scarfed down her burger and fries, spotted the milkshake ads and declared, "On Daddy's birthday, we should surprise him and bring him here for supper!"

Long weekend

Some days with children are not fun - and this was one of them. On days like this, I remind myself not to blame Tokyo, but being here adds a degree of difficulty to the average, not-fun day.

Lucinda and Arno dragged Blaine out of bed to make pancakes, and within an hour, they were squabbling, shouting, screeching and driving us crazy. When will they be old enough to play by themselves in the morning?

Then Blaine told me he felt sick - and he also had to work this afternoon, which meant that I was solo-parenting for the seventh day in a row. (Blaine was in South Korea last week and took a reporting trip to Yokohama on Saturday. He is working like a dog.)

I scrambled and took the kids to a park, Hibiya Koen, near the Imperial Palace, where there was a playground we hadn't visited. It started off well: we emerged from the subway to see Tokyo's version of Nature with a pond, turtles on a rock, ducks and a German garden where several people were painting the scenery from benches.





On to the playground which, like so many Tokyo playgrounds, looks like something you'd find in Romania, circa 1978. Run-down equipment with a bit of rust, on dirt sprinkled with scrubby weeds. Not inspiring.





On the plus side, the park was the finish line for a charity 10k run, and there was a guitarist singing in English. I'd been feeling bummed out, but the kids threw themselves into playing, and pretty soon were chasing each other around.



Then they got tired and Lucinda started whining, but sometimes I can't just make it easy and take a taxi home. Instead I dragged them back to the subway and then decided I should buy groceries - which meant taking the kids into a new store where I couldn't find anything.

Soon enough, they were running down the aisles and pulling colored marshmallows off the shelves and I was hollering at them while I scrambled to buy meat and veggie. And THEN we walked home. Do you ever compound mistakes by making new ones that are just as irrational?

In Seattle, I'd arranged our family life to minimize hassles. Tokyo is more of an adventure, but sometimes it's an adventure in exhaustion.

Design tune-up, please

This is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. Using your cellphone, you can check the precise location and arrival time of the next metro bus on any route.

But the public toilets could use some innovation! This is the ladies' room in a public park: you squat down, hold tight to the bar on the wall and go. At least toilet paper is provided.