Tag Archive for 'Starbucks'

Ginza, Shinjuku, Ebina

Published on November 22, 2009 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

This weekend we planned to head out to Ginza, the most expensive area in one of the most expensive cities in the world. This is where even the kids wear Prada and the primped chihuahuas are carried in Louis Vitton bags. Yep, it’s places like that that I most blend in here (I carried Layla in the my backpack wearing a good Canadian Roots jacket =) Why did we go there? There’s a big toy store I wanted to check out.

The day got off to a late start (as usual) and we ended up at Ginza around 4. Layla was a bit peckish and I was starving, so we decided to grab a bite to eat. Before that, though, we had to buy Layla a jacket because we forgot to grab hers before we left. I was grateful Tamie brought a credit card! Who knew Zara not only sold kids clothes? And at cheaper prices than the Gap! Talk about win-win! Other than the fact my kid is now sporting a Zara hoodie.

For our late afternoon snack, we went for tea at a posh cafe, where the orange juice cost more than the tea… and the tea cost more than the $9 beer. Ravenous as I was, we ended up getting finger sandwiches and a big plate of desserts, most of which Layla scarfed down. I don’t remember the exact cost of everything, mostly because I choose not to. My wallet, on the other hand, will never forget… it was like a slim-fast diet for him.

The toy store was not a disappointment. Layla’s first trip there was highlighted by 4 floors of sample toy mayhem. She seemed very comfortable in the strange place, running from toy to toy to try them all. Her enthusiasm was probably a result of a combination of true child-like wonder… and a whole lot of dessert-like sugar.

After exploring each of the four floors, we headed out to Tamie’s favourite jewelry store. There was a huge crowd gathering around outside to take pictures of a Christmas tree they had on display. Unfortunately for Tamie, and luckily for my already hurting wallet, the store was already closed. Shucks. Maybe next time.

On the way home, we stopped by Shinjuku for dinner. El Torito, one of the few Mexican restaurants to be found here, was our destination of choice. I think the spicy salsa turned Layla off of Mexican for good, though. It’s strange – I’ve been feeding her wasabi for months now and she stopped complaining a long while back, but a little salsa and she was nearly in tears. Different strokes, I guess.

After dinner, I wanted to check out the Christmas lights that are up right now in Shinjuku, but Tamie had other ideas. Krispy Kreme only had a ten minute line up and she had a hankering. Now normally I’m not one to turn down donuts, but I’m also not one to wait in line for them. Tonight, that changed as Layla too wanted to taste the savoury sweetness of the addictive Krispy Kreme. Her excitement only lasted a minute though, as she was bored after that. Tamie is convincing, and we ended up staying and getting a dozen. I thought Ginza was expensive, boy was I wrong. $20 for a dozen donuts. I guess they’ve been printing money in that donut shop for years now.

Today (Sunday), we didn’t have such grand plans — in fact, we didn’t have any. The chill from outside and the laziness that seems to creep into every Sunday left us at home for most of the day. We did some cleaning up and some cleaning out – reorganizing some of the closets and things. By 4, Layla was exhausted (it’s hard work for a 2yr old to clean an apartment). Tamie, rather than spend any time alone with me, went jogging while Layla crashed on the couch with me. She must have been beat because she was still asleep when Tamie came back over an hour later, only to be woken by Tamie ringing the doorbell to get in.

After Tamie was back and changed, we went for dinner at a local izekaya (Japanese pub-style restaurant) before doing a bit of shopping. While we were waiting to get a table, Layla was busy playing with my phone. She got frustrated with something and gave it back to me before starting to throw a hissy-fit. Instead of letting her make a scene, I cut her off with a well-timed banging of my head on the sign behind me. She wanted to stay upset but she couldn’t. She’s a sucker for phyical comedy, and she cracked up. This is the tail end of the whole laughing episode – I wasn’t fast enough to get the biggest laughs on video.

Layla wanted some Starbucks for dessert, and spoiled as she is, she got some. We walked around to look at the Christmas lights set up in Vina Walk for a bit before eventually coming home.

Galleries:
Saturday in Ginza and Shinjuku
Sunday in Ebina

Shopaholics Anonymous

Published on November 8, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

To say that this weekend was a bit lazy would be an understatement. In fact, to say that this weekend was a lot lazy would still be an understatement.

Saturday we woke up around 1… in the afternoon. Layla was up until 11 the previous night, but she’d never slept in this late. I would have gladly slept in another hour if I wasn’t worried the poor kid was dead, or worse. Luckily she was still sawing logs, sweating up a storm in the process. I think she might have had a bit of a fever early in the morning and had sweat it out by mid afternoon. It’s why we kept her up late the previous night — score one for forward thinking parenting!

Our plan for the day was to go out and get some shoes. Big plans, to be sure, but we were already behind schedule. After getting cleaned up and having breakfast we were off to Machida for some shopping fun. If there’s one thing I love, it’s shoe shopping. Especially with my two favourite girls…

Surprisingly, we found Tamie’s shoes at the first place we hit. It was amazing, like nothing I’d ever seen before. She didn’t even need to try on more than three pairs of shoes before deciding. Twas’ a sign of things to come, or so I’d hoped, as we headed off to find my shoes…

The last pair of shoes I got here, they didn’t have my size so I had to get it delivered through the mail. I had tried some on for size, and they fit pretty well, so thought the ones coming in the mail would be as comfortable. After a couple days of wearing them, trying to break them in properly, I found they still were a bit small. To this day, they are still one of the most uncomfortable pair of shoes I’ve ever bought. With that in mind, I was determined to find a pair of shoes, in stock, that we could try on and buy… no matter how long it took.

I found a pair that seemed decent, and we asked the salesguy for a size 27, the sizes here being the size of your foot in cm… I’m still not exactly sure what the size 10 I wore in Canada actually represented, as my foot is neither 10 centimeters or 10 inches. He brought them and they were a bit snug, to say the least. We tried a 27.5 and again they were a bit small. Finally the guy looked at my current shoes, which were supposedly size 10 and said that should be a 28… I tried on a 28… and voila – a much better fit. Especially compared to the torturous shoes I’d been wearing. We walked out of that, the first store we hit for my shoes, successful in our search for shoes. Two for two!

To celebrate, we headed off for some ice cream. Layla told me she didn’t want a big ice cream, but she wanted me to have a big ice cream. How could I say no to that? She ended up taking all the parts of my parfait that she wanted, leaving me with her leftovers. Regardless, it was a decent snack and turned out to be most of our dinner. It turned out to be later than we thought and we were a bit stuffed, even after looking around for a while after the ice cream. We ended up at the outback for some steak salad… and some ice cream (for the kid) for dessert.

Today, we headed off for another trip to the park. Layla seems to love it there, and we love to take her. It’s the only grass field for miles, so it’s kind of a special place here… making it kind of a busy place too. One interesting thing about the grass park is the hill, where kids use cardboard as toboggans and slide down it. It sure looks ghetto, but I guess when there’s no snow you have to make do with what you got. One lady even tricked out her cardboard by putting plastic handles on it. Very impressive, indeed.

At the park, we kicked a ball around before heading off to the playground for some slide fun, only to close out with a terrifying steam spray. The same steam spray Layla used to love to run through as a young(er) kid, she’s now deathly afraid of. I ended up carrying her through it, which is more than she let me do last time, so progress is being made, albeit slowly. Maybe someday she’ll be as brave as she was when she was a year old. Maybe.

As we were leaving the park, the chipper youngster chirped up with her suggestion of what to do next. “Starbucks!” The call for the green tea frappuccino was message enough that we go there far too often. Regardless, we went. Some parents mark lines on a wall to watch how their kids grow up — we take pictures at Starbucks. I figure in five years, I’ll send the pictures in to the marketing department and see if I can’t make a few bucks on all the money we spent there. It’s really more of an investment, in that respect.

While we were sucking back our drinks, Layla pointed out that we dress her like a bum. The knee of her pants, already sewn up once, had another hole from her skinning her knee one of any number of times. She was adamant that we buy her new pants, and we were more than happy to oblige. We went to the Gap where a nice saleslady got to practice her English with us. She showed us a great deal on a new line of pants — buy 2 pairs and get 20% off the purchase. Sounded good. The only problem — there’s no way I am going to shell out 9200 yen (100 bucks!) on pants for my kid that she’s either going to outgrow or rip in two months. Even with a 20% discount.

I checked a few other places while Layla played, but I couldn’t find anything decent for a decent price. Tamie took a look and found a couple options (I’ll admit, she’s a much better shopper than I am). Layla picked a pair, tried them on, and was so happy with them that she ended up wearing them moments after we bought them.

Not having spent enough money yet, we headed off to buy a new vacuum cleaner. It wasn’t exactly a spur of the moment thing, as every time I vacuumed Tamie would complain about the quality of my work, and I would complain about the quality of the tools I was equipped with. The fact that she complained about the tool whenever she vacuumed too was a clear indicator it was less the blame of the operator as it was the fault of the machine. One new vacuum cleaner later, and I have a happy wife and a cleaner apartment. How’s that for win-win?

The last thing we wanted to buy, a Google phone for Tamie, had to be put on hold because by the time we actually got around to it, the store had closed. It wasn’t a total loss, though, as it will give us something to do next week, if we don’t find something else to do first.

Pictures from the weekend are here:

Saturday
Sunday

Long Week, Short Weekend

Published on October 25, 2009 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

After a week of long working days and longer working nights, I was happy to have the weekend upon us. But alas, when the going gets tough, it just gets tougher.

Friday morning, Layla had enough of a fever that the daycare wasn’t willing to take her (38 degrees! oh my!) Swine flu running rampant in our little town, and reports all over the news again caused great concern in Tamie and her parents, enough to take Layla to the hospital. The doctor, after poking and prodding, concluded that she was undetermined to have the flu (of any kind) and we’d have to come back on Saturday. At 9am. So much for sleeping in.

9am rolled around and we were scrambling to get to the hospital on time. Arriving just after 9:07, I was happy to see that there weren’t a million parents with kids in masks. Who ever thought one would be relieved to be only the thirteenth in line at a hospital. We were actually taken care of pretty quickly, and it was determined again that Layla might not have the flu. The fact that her fever had broken wasn’t a good indication as it might come back.

A clean(ish) bill of health in hand, we set out to have a good weekend. So what did we do? The weather was miserable so we didn’t do much. We shopped, we played, we ate, we came home.

Shopping was interesting in that we picked Layla up another toilet. She’s deathly afraid of the big blue (in our house) water closet, and even when we put the friendly bunny Miffy on the toilet seat, she’s still paralyzed. The daycare, from what I understand, are doing their best to toilet train her and have a pot with anpanman, a Japanese cartoon character, encouraging the kids to do their business. I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a similar pot at home, hopefully making her comfortable enough to want to use a toilet. So far? She’s had a lot of fun pushing the buttons that play music… not so much on actually using it.

Playing involved going to the kids’ floor in the department store and letting Layla run around and play with other kids. There’s a sample toy train track out that all kids seem to love, Layla being just one of them. She wasn’t too happy when her favourite toy train (Thomas the Tank Engine, for those keeping score) was being used by another little girl. The little girl was busy playing with two trains, and despite my telling her to wait her turn, Layla insisted on trying to get one. I, using all my cunning (and most of my Japanese skills), convinced the little girl to swap one of her trains for a caboose. Layla still wasn’t happy and tried to take the girl’s other train. She really wasn’t happy when I removed her from the toy section… screaming all the way. Fun times, indeed.

Eating was the highlight of the day. We had shabu shabu, which is lots of beef in a hot pot. Not unlike the previous two weeks of sukiyaki, shabu shabu involves thinly sliced pieces of beef that we cook ourselves in one of many kinds of broth, then dunk in sauce and eat. A new place opened up in our neighbourhood a couple weeks ago and Tamie finally didn’t refuse (at least not strongly enough) to going. It was decent, but we’ve definitely had better.

Sunday was another rainy, miserable day. Tamie had a dentist appointment in the morning, so Layla and I hung out at home before heading out to meet her in Hon-Atsugi when she finished. I was eager to hit up the Burger King there because they were offering a SEVEN patty hamburger, in honour of Microsoft releasing Windows 7. Thankfully, they were sold out when we got there so we went for lunch at a more reasonable, less beefy place.

Before lunch, we headed to the science museum to open Layla’s mind to the wonders and amazements that science has to offer. She seemed to have a good time, playing with marbles and … well, mostly marbles. I was most interested in the hand sanitizer they had available at the exit with the big sign outlining the dangers of influenza. Pandemic, much?

After lunch, we came back to Ebina and ventured back up to the kids’ floor of the department store to give Layla another opportunity to throw a tantrum… unfortunately, they were having some kind of halloween party so there were a thousand kids, all hopped up on sugar and adrenaline… I say unfortunately, not because I didn’t want Layla to get involved, rather she was too timid to go out and play. The chaos of it all seemed to wilt her spirits so we instead helped Tamie shop for a new jogging shirt that she used after we got back home.

Maybe not the most exciting weekend, but it had its moments.

Pictures are available here:
Saturday
Sunday

Hospitals, Rabid Babies, and Rollerblading. Just Another Typical Saturday.

Published on September 6, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

After a night of barbecuing, Canadian style, with coworkers on the company balcony (Canadian style meaning with a propane barbecue big enough to cook more than one hamburger at a time =), I was a little worried about getting up the next morning. Tamie was more concerned with my coming home on Friday night. Luckily (or not?) it was a fairly early night, so I got home with little trouble and fairly sober.

Today started out early, but not as early as we planned. A 10:30am appointment at the hospital (Layla’s bi-weekly checkup) meant we needed to get up around 9 to give us plenty of time to get ready and go. Setting our alarm for 8:30 should have been enough of a head start but, as always happens, a few presses of the snooze button and we were already behind the eight ball. Scrambling to get ready, we were out the door with seconds to spare. Making it to the hospital by 10:40 could be considered on time for a Saturday morning.

With Layla semi-feverish, coughing and sniffling, I was a little concerned she might get the lung and nostril treatment again. Luckily for her the doctor gave her the green light, only prescribing another bag full of medicine and forgoing the nose torture. After ten minutes of sucking vapour and twenty minutes of waiting for our prescription(s) to be filled, we were out of the hospital. The whole day ahead of us, we were ready to do… something. Planning is for the unspontaneous!

Back at home, Tamie fried up some of her world-famous potato chips while I readied my rollerblades for the next time I went – apparently not rotating the wheels is not a good thing, and I discovered my front wheels were worn down to the metal. I figured now was probably a good time to switch them up. Layla ended up lying down on the floor and falling asleep before we sat down to have a light lunch of beer and chips (on an unrelated note, I’m still not sure why I’m putting on weight). No amount of poking, prodding or holding chips under Layla’s nose would wake her up.

Eventually Layla woke up and we dropped by a bookstore to get a guide book about Naruto, our upcoming island excursion to see giant whirlpools. While Tamie checked up books on Naruto, I looked at the guide books for Canada – it’s interesting to see what is interesting to others about Ottawa. Funny thing, they listed four or five restaurants in the market… one of which was a Japanese restaurant and one being Colonnade Pizza. Yep, that’s Ottawa cuisine in a nutshell.

After our adventures researching and planning our next adventures (spontaneity be damned), we headed over to get some coffee at Starbucks. Frappuccinos all around! Again, no idea about that whole weight thing… I had my camera with me, as always, so snapped a couple pics of the girls as Tamie read about Naruto and Layla chugged her green tea concoction.

Eventually bored of the whole coffee thing, Layla lead us downstairs to play. I know she likes to play on stairs so it was win-win for her. Downstairs we did, in fact, play. Running in circles is a great game to a two-year old. At one point, I picked her up, threw her in the air and caught her. Tamie’s always asking me to do that while she was the camera so I did. Layla laughed, Tamie snapped a picture, and I caught the baby. Lather, rinse, repeat. The fourth or fifth time I did it, Layla ended up banging her tooth on my chin, or more precisely biting a big chunk of flesh out of my face. Reeling from the pain, but too manly to admit it, I inspected her mouth to see if she was hurt. The toothy grin told me enough. She was fine. Blood pouring out of my chin, I took a kleenex from Tamie to try to stem the bleeding. Light headed, I sat down while trying not to cry.

As we sat there holding kleenex on my chin, a group of high school kids appeared in front of us out of nowhere. They had a small speaker that they hooked up to their cell phones and blasted (by blasted I mean barely audibly played) tinny dance music for all to enjoy. They took turns dancing – each having his own shtick. One guy did backflips, one did the robot. One seemed to only be able to bounce on one hand – he bounced well, but after seeing it for the third time it got old. Before we left, one guy put on a helmet and spun on his head, break-dance style. The future of boybands was there in front of us and we had to leave to go grocery shopping!

By the time we made it back home, it was getting dark but I was eager to get out and try my newly rotated wheels. Tamie, too, was eager to go jogging. Since I was on wheels, she figured I’d be quicker so I left while she stayed back to watch the kid and prepare dinner. Boy was she wrong. I should have been faster but it was dark. There are no street lights in rice fields. Seeing is definitely not overrated.

I wanted to find a good route so went exploring, letting the colour of the traffic lights dictate my direction. When there were no traffic lights I’d just pick whichever street had the biggest sidewalk. Luckily I had a GPS enabled phone with me — but even after I got lost I was too stubborn to look at it. It’s not a big neighbourhood so I figured I could make my way back. I’m here typing now, so obviously I did, but not without doubling back a few times. Check this out for an idea of how lost I was. =)

By the time I made it back, nearly an hour had passed. Tamie tried to use the dark as an excuse not to go jogging but I would have none of it. Actually, it took very little to convince my little marathon runner to get out there and sweat. So while she didn’t get lost, I watched Sesame Street with Layla. She fell asleep, and I almost did. Luckily Tamie came back just in time. We had a nice steak dinner before putting Layla down to bed. Looking at the time now, it’s about time we head off ourselves.