The next day we hit up a nice breakfast, checked out the on-site aquarium (which turned out to be pretty decent), splash around in the water for a bit, summit the mountain and then get a good lunch on the lake. The sun was hot on the ground but on top of the mountain it was foggy and windy, which translated into a chilly (or refreshing, depending on who you ask) experience.

Layla fell asleep on top of the mountain, shivering in my arms. I wrapped her in my shirt, for whatever that could offer, and we took a look around while she slept. She was out for quite a while, not even waking up when we got on the cable car. It wasn’t until we were almost back at the hotel that her head popped up, eyes wide open and she said without missing a beat “Not windy anymore! No more chilly!”

Pictures from the trip are here:
Click Here

Got our tickets finally – we’d been scouring the internet and travel agents for weeks looking for a decent price. Ended up finding the least indecent. Can you believe it costs more than double the airfare to travel in August than in December! That’s ridiculous! But what’s even more ridiculous is the airfare fluctuates in price, thousands of dollars at a time every couple of hours.

A couple months ago we decided to head to Ottawa in August and started doing the usual probing online and found prices were pretty steep. At the time, the thought was that not all tickets were issued to travel agents and the price would eventually come down. It didn’t. In fact, it got as high as $9500+(!) CAD for 3 of us to fly from Tokyo to Ottawa. The cheapest I ever saw it was ~$6800. To put this into perspective, last year at Christmas we paid between $3000 and 4000. We didn’t get the cheapest fare, but we didn’t pay the highest either. On the bright side, the fuel surcharge has gone down.

What really gets me about the whole airfare game is it really is a game. I’d log into the Air Canada server to check prices in the morning and it would be one price, log in not 12 hours later and it shifted up or down hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. It got so bad, I’d be checking three times a day to see what the lucky number was. I wasn’t able to find any pattern, but it got me wondering what factors are actually driving the radical prices changes. Regardless, the whole thing feels like a bad casino game – no matter what happens, the house always wins in the end.

But the tickets are booked and paid for (thanks Tamie, I owe you one!) and we’re now in the midst of planning what we’re actually going to do on the trip. We’re only going to be there 7 days (get in on Friday night, leave the following Saturday morning), so I already know it’s going to go by too fast. In any case, we’re all looking forward to going… especially Layla who, after chatting with the grandparents that showed her a shiny new bike waiting for her in Ottawa, she’s raring to go!

So we’ll see you in a few weeks, Ottawa. Hope the heat waves and earthquakes are over by then.

…

oops.

I almost forgot! The big news!

Tamie’s pregnant again.

Baby’s due in December, thus the August quickie. We’ll be in a delivery room around December 28th and I don’t think it’d be prudent to leave my waddling wife in Japan to celebrate Christmas in Ottawa.

As I often do, I offered Layla a sip of beer to which she always tells me “NO! I’m not old enough yet!” and laughs. As usual, she gave me her canned response but this time I asked how old she had to be.

“Five!” she replied emphatically. “When Layla is five, Layla drinks beer!” (she speaks in the third person all the time. I think it’s because Elmo does.)

I laughed, and asked back “What can you drink when you are four then?”

You could see the wheels in her brain were working overtime until the mischievous grin on her face that revealed she had an answer. “Mom’s drink!” she answered, proudly nodding her head. “If Layla is four, Layla can drink Mom’s pop!”

Pop at four, beer at five. I had to ask. “And six? What will you get when you are six?” I asked, unsure what she would answer.

“Hmm…” she pondered, her brow wrinkled in deep thought. Finally an answer had come to her. “When Layla is six, she can have a chinchin!” she grinned.

“A what?” I asked, laughing but unsure if the Japanese in my head was working or not.

“A chinchin!” she answered again. Tamie’s giggling reassured me I knew what I heard.

The game ended there for I didn’t want to know what she got when she turned seven. For those who don’t know, chinchin is not a double-chin, it’s a penis.

I’ll put up some pictures as soon as I get that software moved over (and working) on the new server. It shouldn’t take long, but the laws of procrastination and a lack of time mean it might be a day or two.

For now, I’ve been playing around with the gallery code – click the gallery tab. It should show the latest updated pictures. Is this more useful than my writing a post linking to the latest gallery? It’s certainly easier for me

Pictures and more to come, once I get them sorted out. Stay tuned.

We got up early-ish and headed out to catch the first of several trains. We booked a romance car (an odd name for the reserved seat train) that took us up to the Hakone-Yumoto. From there we took another, smaller train that criss-crossed up the mountain to a place called Gora. After getting off this train, we took a cable car up to Sounzan, another station on the mountain, where we got on the Hakone Ropeway, a gondola that took us to Owakudani — a place famous for hot springs and black eggs.

At Owakudani, we walked up a small path (with a thousand other people) to take a closer look at some of the hot springs and to get our fill of black eggs. The eggs are boiled in the hot springs, which turns them black. Legend says that if you eat one it’ll add seven years to your life.

When we finished with the eggs and photo opportunities, we took another gondola to Togendai, a station on the edge of Lake Ashi. Lake Ashi is something I’d been wanting to check out since I arrived in Japan. We’d been in and around Hakone several times and even driven and walked around parts of the lake. However, there’s a pirate ship that takes tourists from one side of the lake to the other. Yep, tourist trap. I think Tamie was in the minority as we rode that boat across the lake.

At the other side of the lake, we got off the boat and started to think about what we were going to do for the night. Tamie was expecting to find an information center where we could ask about hotels in the area… unfortunately there was no such information center. There was a hotel, however, and I went and asked about availability. As expected, they were booked solid. I asked about other hotels in the area and the guy kindly pointed out a ryokan (old-style Japanese hotel) across the street.

We went to check the ryokan out and it too was full up. When I explained our situation the guy said that on weekends, Hakone is pretty much booked up… he did offer us a room without dinner or breakfast, which was great except for the fact we didn’t see any restaurants around, Tamie wasn’t feeling well, and Layla was getting sleepy and hungry. In the end, we headed back to the dock to catch a bus back home, grabbing dinner at a restaurant near the train station before coming back. Not exactly the perfect ending we had in mind, but looking back on the day we had, the good times certainly outweigh any disappointment.

Today, we were a bit less adventurous. We headed to the local park to play with Layla and play she did. She crossed a rope bridge that she’d been afraid to cross since losing a shoe on it the last time. At one point she wanted to play with her ball but didn’t want either me or Tamie to touch it… until she realized it’s not a whole lot of fun to throw a ball and have to go get it yourself while your parents sat together watching. We ended up playing together again in no time. Eventually, the bubbles we brought came out — watching the joy Tamie gets out of blowing bubbles is more fun for me than actually blowing them. I think Tamie enjoys them even more than Layla does.

At the end of the day, we headed to off to do some grocery shopping, but not before stopping at Starbucks to get some pictures of Layla. At this point, we don’t even go because we like the coffee/frappucinnos – I think we just go to get another picture of Layla there. We certainly have enough of them.

Pictures, as usual, can be found at the gallery.

Saturday in Hakone

Sunday in Ebina

Layla has been in a bit of a terrible twos mode recently. She’s become a lot more independent now, proud of the fact that she can pee in a toilet and zip her own jacket. As such, she’s starting to think she doesn’t need to listen to her parents and has been starting to act out, albeit politely. Instead of saying “No!” outright when I tell her to do something, she tells me “No, thank you!” with as sweet a smile as only a daughter can smile. My heart melts at the sight, but luckily it’s not my heart that disciplines the poor kid… it’s my hand. On her bottom.

The other night we were all together — me, Tamie and the little monster, having a nice time as a family when said monster decided that she wasn’t going to listen to us and do her own thing. When threats and yelling didn’t work to correct her misbehaviour, I picked her up and swatted her on the butt. It wasn’t the first time she was spanked, and I guarantee it won’t be the last, but this time the funniest thing happened. She burst into tears (as usual), but this time she told me that she wanted her Mom to spank her instead of me… keep in mind, this was after the butt-swat already occurred! The poor kid was adamant – she cried so hard and wouldn’t stop until Tamie actually swatted her on the rear end too! It was all I could do to just to keep a straight face.

So with that in mind, I reiterate — Happy Mother’s Day, to all the Mom’s out there. Your jobs are tough — thanks for handling the dirty work.

(I’ll leave it to Kevin to add a spanking/”Who’s your Daddy” joke in the comments =)

A quick recap of the events, more for my memory than anything else:

Saturday – Hospitals. Lots of hospitals. Both Layla and Tamie are getting healthy and news is looking good on all counts. Thank goodness for that.

Sunday – Spent the day in Ebina, looking around. We headed to a park with a 75m slide, found a temple we knew nothing about, and hit up Starbucks for our weekly(?) fraps.

Monday – Went clam-digging with the in-laws. About a million other people had the same idea and we were stuck in a huge crowd – luckily the ocean is large and we all fit. Layla decided she wasn’t afraid of the ocean anymore and ended up having a blast. I think this is where I got sick.

Tuesday – Headed down to Enoshima for the first aquarium/beach visit of the season. Enjoyed the dolphin show with another million people – Layla didn’t cry and was quite proud of the fact. I was quite proud later when we left the aquarium and she wanted to play on the beach, fearless of the waves that petrified her only a year ago.

Wednesday – Went to an outlet mall in Minami-Machida called Grandberry Mall. Found out that I’m too big for even the XL pants. Shamed and sick, I went to bed early this night.

Pictures? I got ‘em. You want to see ‘em? Click below:

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

… Wednesday still to come.