Day 200! Feels like yet another milestone.

After breakfast and showers and playing we all got on the subway to Shibuya. From the station we walked up to Yoyogi park. There we found two different (I think) festivals. The first seemed like some sort of government funded food and wellness market. Each stall was doing health tests or selling food. We stopped to make a sock puppet and Millie was given a brief lecture on the important of eating vegetables.

Then there was the Tokyo snow festival, which was full of snowboarders and their gear. There was live music, stalls from various snowboard brands, and different activities for kids. She and Nick waited in a looooong line to sled down a very small artificial snow hill.

And she spent a while painting a tarp with other kids.

She had a great time and jumped from thing to thing asking for “more activities!” Once she had tried them all we walked into the beautiful park. Once again we had perfect fall weather.

We walked through the park and to the Meiji Jingu shrine. This was more of a pleasant walk and didn’t feel like the center of a packed city. At the shrine we did the obligatory two bows, throw in money, two claps, and a bow. Any religion that requires giving money gets a side eye from me.

We led the shrine and walked into Harajuku to “Kiddy Land” – a 5 story absolutely packed toy store. It was hell. Millie got a small toy.

We walked through the busy shopping streets of harajuku. At this point our legs were getting tired and we were hungry. It was the classic trip afternoon: 4pm and too spent for another activity, too early for dinner, and too soon to head back to the hotel. We walked 30 minutes back to Shibuya and had a delicious sushi meal. I had researched where to find sushi that was high quality without being fancy.

By now it was about 5 and the sun was starting to set. Millie and my parents went back to the hotel and Nick and I had a brief little date. We had a beer at a nearby brewery and then attempted to go to a Japanese whiskey bar. The bar tried to charge us a confusing cover charge so we left and had a final drink at the tiki bar in our giant hotel. We got back early enough to read a very hyper Millie a chapter of her book.