父の日

今日は父の日 (Today is Father’s Day).

Just as they did on 母の日 (Mother’s Day), my kids told my wife and I we should go out on a “date” and they’d cook dinner today. (Click here to read my post for last Mother’s Day).

So my wife and I went to 上野 (Ueno, Tokyo).

We walked around for a bit and stopped at a coffee shop for a coffee and talked for a while.
Then we stopped at a store and bought some things our daughters needed for school.

When our daughters called and told that dinner would be ready soon, we headed home.

Dinner was wonderful! As it’s 父の日 (Father’s Day), my kids made one of my favorites: 「豚キムチ」 (Pork and Kimuchi on rice) and a fruit salad for dessert!
美味しかった！ (It was delicious!)

After dinner, they gave me Father’s Day presents! One daughter gave me a ケータイ・ストラップ (cell-phone strap) that she made by hand! It’s very nice! And it’s black—my kids know my taste!
The other two gave me a notebook / pen set for my 日本語 (Japanese language) studies! Great!

It was an excellent day!

(When my wife and I went to 上野 (Ueno) today, we passed by 下谷神社 (Shitaya Shrine). Here are a few pictures I took of the 「鳥居」 (Torii Gate) in front of the shrine):

秋分の日

Yesterday was a Japanese holiday, 秋分の日 (Autumn Equinox)…so we all had the day off.

Both the 秋分の日 (Autumn Equinox) and 春分の日 (Spring Equinox) are holidays in Japan. Japanese people pay a visit to their family grave on these holidays.
(See my FAQ here to read about Japan’s holidays).

After we went to our family grave site, we decided to go to the Tokyo Dome City amusement park because we still had ride tickets from our last visit there.

I agreed to ride on the big, wild roller-coaster with my kids.

I’ll never do that again! I used to really like roller-coasters when I was my kids’ ages…but I’ve decided that I don’t like them anymore!

I thought I’d be able to take a video of the ride…but the amusement park staff wouldn’t let me bring my camera on the ride. It’s just as well…I couldn’t have been able to use my camera since both of my hands were holding the handrail on the roller-coaster with a deathgrip for the entire ride!

(But last month I took a video of this roller-coaster while I was standing safely on the ground. It’s on this post).

After the amusement park, we walked to 根津神社 (Nezu Shrine).

This is a video of the shrine’s entrance:

Nezu Shrine has a row of over 150 Torii Gates.

Here’s a video I took while walking under all of the 鳥居 (Torii Gates):

Here’s the rest of them:

A few more videos of the shrine:

From there we walked to 上野 (Ueno) and went to some temples, the park, and a few stores around there.

We found this small 蝉 (cicada):

We had dinner in an 居酒屋 (Japanese izakaya restaurant).

We went home from 上野駅 (Ueno Train Station)…and walked past the Hard Rock Cafe, Uyeno-eki Tokyo.

Here’s a video I took walking to the entrance of 上野駅 (Ueno train station):