Tokyo, Japan

For our 15th anniversary, Eve and I visited Tokyo, Japan for a week. Well, the idea for the trip first came up because I was accepted as part of a group to present a talk at a computer graphics conference in Tokyo about the characters work on Incredibles 2. I was out of town in Vancouver for our actual anniversary (Aug. 15) this year, and so when I got this opportunity to go to Japan, Eve wanted to go too, and so we extended it into a week long special anniversary trip. We have never traveled just the two of us outside of the US and Canada, so this was indeed a special adventure for us.

Akihabara - This an area of city with a large concentration of technology and anime related stores.  Naturally this was where we did our souvenir shopping.  It was exciting to see so many statues, toys, and games related to popular Japanese anime.  Yodabashi-Akiba, was a seven floor electronics store with many varieties of just about anything you could think of buying at those types of stores.  Right outside of it was a Square Enix Cafe, where you can eat meals featured in Final Fantasy 15 and shop souvenirs of characters from many of Square Enix's games.

Ueno Park - The zoo was where we spent most of our time while we were in Ueno, and most of our time while at the zoo was spent in line to see the giant pandas.  The wait was an hour and a half while nothing else had a line.  Pandas are quite loved in Japan.

Robot Restaurant - Two of the most culturally memorable experiences we had was the Odaiba bath house “theme park” and the Robot Restaurant dinner show.  I like to describe the robot show as 2 hours of Japanese Macy’s Day parade against alien invaders. Dancers, exotic costumes, giant animatronic floats, lasers, pyrotechnics, loud action music, cheesy acting... all contributed to an over-the-top sensory experience that I think could only be done in Japan.

Skytree and Tokyo Tower - These both are popular tourist areas where you can go high up to look over the city, Skytree being the newer, more popular one and Tokyo Tower being the more famous, well-known one that was designed after the Eiffel Tower.

Animal Cafes - A unique activity we found was going to cafes to pay for time to pet and get pictures with certain animals.  There were cat, hedgehog, and owl cafes.

Origami Class - At the Siggraph conference there was a group from the city separate from the conference organizers that offered free classes to help promote certain cultural aspects of the city.  Eve took a kimono class, and we both also took an origami class together.  I've always enjoyed this art of folding paper into complex shapes, and we were walked through how to make 3 little projects in an hour.

Odaiba Onsen - an onsen is a Japanese bath house or hot springs. They are common to find in hotels and neighborhoods, and are a popular place to go in Japanese culture for physical and spiritual healing. The one in Odaiba is a big and popular tourist bath house that is more of a theme park designed around celebrating this cultural tradition. Starting from the entry area everyone wears a Japanese bathrobe, or yukata. There is a central area that is like a town carnival with lots of food booths and games for the whole family. Then surrounding that is the bath house area (males and females separate), the foot bath, massage, and lounge areas.

Food - We seemed to always be surrounded by great food options.  No surprise that the sushi was really good, and I even converted Eve to like certain kinds of it, where before she had no interest in eating it at all.  One of the sushi places we ate at had you order your plates on a tablet, and then the food was delivered to you by conveyor belt.  But all kinds of food were great there.  I liked how in the windows and displays of most restaurants there were full plates of food showing what the dishes look liked.  They were preserved somehow so that the food wouldn't go bad while on display.  Another great place we ate was The Happy Pancake, which served the best pancakes I've ever had in my life.  They were thick but soft souffle pancakes served with a variety of options, from ice cream and fruit to eggs and bacon.  A common dessert we saw were crepes with ice cream, fruit, cheesecake, whipped cream, and more wrapped inside.

Special buildings - With all the Japanese temples and shrines we saw, we thought it important to see the LDS temple in Tokyo.  Unfortunately, not only was it closed, but the whole outside was covered completely in scaffolding and fake walls, apparently undergoing a major renovation, which made for unique temple pictures.  Meiji Jingu was a shrine in the middle of a forest.  It was nice to get away from the metropolitan areas and have a nice walk surrounded by woods, sometimes with very few people near us.

Digital Art Museum - Just a few years ago a digital art museum opened in Odaiba, and has a bunch of creative art displays using lights and projections.  For example, kids can do coloring and have their pictures scanned to be projected on a huge wall where the pictures travel across the wall and can be interacted with when touched.  One of my favorite "displays" was a huge room with thousand of LED light strands hanging down that were synchronized to blink in patterns that depicted rain and other weather conditions.

Siggraph - The whole reason for the trip was so that I could attend the Siggraph graphics conference and help present a talk about the characters in Incredibles 2 and how they have been improved over those from the first film.  The talk was one of the last talks on the last day of the conference and over 150 came to listen to our talk.

We had a wonderful trip and are very grateful Eve's parents were able to visit our house and stay with our children while we were gone, making this memorable trip possible for us.