Japan with Brianna and Andrew

Earlier this year (March 24 to April 3) we continued the Goodale family tradition of Dad taking each kid to Japan for their 16th birthday. Though it was two year late for Brianna and a few months early for Andrew, I took two kids with me this time. Man oh man did we have a great time and create a lot of memories.

The two of them going together I think made it a lot of fun for them, too. Brianna and Andrew are really close, and they had a great time traveling together with me. Probably one of the funniest moments was when we were in a subway car pulling in to a station in Tokyo. Just as the subway was coming to a stop, Brianna gave Andrew a play slap (as they tend to do), only it landed much harder than she intended. Well... there were some high-school-age girls standing on the platform (outside the subway car) who saw and probably heard this exchange. At first, the girls got this horrified look on their faces, but then when they saw both Brianna and Andrew laughing hysterically at the whole thing, they start laughing hysterically, too.

Not funny was what was going on in Japan at the time. We arrived just a couple of weeks after the devastating earthquake/tsunami of March 11th in northeastern Japan. Due to radiation scares, etc. there was much debate beforehand whether or not we should even complete the trip, but having planned it for months in advance, we decided to go, and we're sure glad we did. Most of our time was spent in western Japan, anyway, far away from any possible radiation effects. We spent just a couple of days in Tokyo, where the biggest thing we noticed was that stores closed early, and many lights were off throughout the city, due to electricity shortages due to the Fukushima nuclear power plant being out.

We started in Nagoya, where we traveled to Toyota to attend church on Sunday morning, March 27th. I served in Toyota for 10 months of my mission (nearly 25 years ago!), so it's always fun to go back there. Then after tooling around Nagoya, we headed down to Kyoto.

We used Kyoto as a basis to explore Nara, where we went to Kasuga Taisha, saw the Great Buddah (60+ foot statue), crawled through Buddah's nostril (well... Brianna and Andrew made it, ensuring their passage to heaven), and played with the deer ("shika!") at Nara Park. Oh my goodness the deer could be terrifyingly aggressive!

Of course, we spent a day seeing the awesome cultural shrines, etc. at Kyoto: the Golden Pavilion, Kiyomizu-dera, Toji; as well as Nijo Castle. Both Brianna and Andrew discovered that they dug tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlets) while in Kyoto. We went and saw this funky cultural presentation, too, with a traditional tea ceremony, some geisha dancing, a weird puppet show, and so on. But we also got to see Kiyomizu-dera "light-up" where for just a couple weeks a year it's open at night and the hillsides, temples, trees (cherry blossoms!!!) are all brilliantly lit up.

According to Brianna and Andrew, probably the most fun part of the trip was the day we went to Miyajima. We had a ton of fun just exploring the island for a full day. If you ever make it to Japan, DO make an effort to spend a day on Miyajima. It's a small island (probably 3 miles by 5 miles long, rising up to a peak of about 1,700 feet) just off the coast from Hiroshima. We just LOVE this awesome photo of Brianna and Andrew holding up the famous floating red Shinto gate with their bare hands!

Then we did one thing I had never done before on these trips: explored the Peace Parks at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the same day. Though I had noticed the extreme contrasts of both parks, it was particularly poignant (I've always wanted to use those two words together) seeing them both in the same day. The positive (yet realistic) uplifting presentation at Hiroshima, versus the dark, depressing memorial that is Nagasaki. It was a lot to accomplish in just one day, and we just barely made it back to the Nagasaki train station for the last train back to Hiroshima (where we were staying in a hotel) that night.

Two major disappointments on the trip, though, so I guess we'll have to go back again some day! First of all, there is this awesome monkey park at Mt. Misen on Miyajima (accessible only via ropeway), where when I've been there before we've seen hundreds of monkeys. But on this trip, not a monkey was seen. Brianna, in particular, was quite sad. I don't know where all the monkeys were. The second disappointment was that due to the earthquake/tsunami, Tokyo Disneyland was still closed the entire time we were there.

In spite of that, we had fun in Tokyo, too. When I was 16 years old, we had a home stay student from Japan live with us for three weeks during the summer of 1982, and I'm still very good friends with him. We spent a day with he and his two daughters exploring Tokyo together. We went to Asakusa and Kaminarimon, we took a water bus tour down the Sumida River, we explored the Odaiba area, and we wrapped up the day going to Tokyo Tower. While we were waiting in line to take the elevators up to the top, they ceased operations briefly to inspect the tower. We hadn't felt it while waiting there at ground level, but they announced that there had been an aftershock, and needed to do a minor inspection of the tower before continuing. But continue they did, and we all got high together in Tokyo.

We had an amazing time, and I am so grateful to have some awesome kids!!! To view all the pics/videos from the trip, you can go to the Flickr site here. I also have a 10-page, 6,820-word, 78-point daily report compilation if you're interested in that, too.