Now to share the rest of our adventures!

Wednesday
As we had the day to ourselves we decided to do something fun for Tate, so we went to the Tokyo Toy Museum.

The Tokyo Toy museum is in an old school that closed due to lack of enrolments. 8 classrooms are filled with toys on display and also to play with.

The first room we went into had lots of different toys like spinning tops and different types of pull toys. Tate’s particular favourite was a crocodile pull toy, although he much preferred to put it on a table to play with than pull it along!

The next room was pretty cool with a big empty wooden cubby house in the middle of the room and different toys around the side including a wooden ball pit filled with wooden toys. It was kind of weird to sit on wooden balls but Tate enjoyed it for a while.

Ball pits are fun!

Care to guess Tate’s favourite thing to do in this room? Walk up and down the stairs leading to the cubby house!

There were quite a few rooms that didn’t hold Tate’s interest because the toys were for older children. If he had been a fair bit older it would have been fun to try out the traditional Japanese toys with him.

The last room to try was a baby room. Lots of toys perfect for Tate! The most interesting thing in this room was a wooden slide. Tate loved climbing up it and sliding back down. It was the perfect size for a little person! I wonder of we could commission one for our apartment?

Tate on one of his many trips down the slide.

That night we joined Giulio and his friend for yummy American style food at Hatos Bar. We enjoyed chilli fries, BBQ pork ribs, corn bread and pulled pork sliders. Japan does excellent non-Japanese cuisine!

Thursday
Before meeting Giulio and Dan for lunch in Rippongi Hills we went to Yoyogi Park to wander around given it is right by the train station. While walking past the bike rental place we decided that Richard would take Tate on his first bike ride. Tate cried when being put in the baby seat. Even though he loves pointing out bikes he had no idea what he was about to do! Once he was off and riding with Richard though he enjoyed it. On ending the bike ride the cracker used to appease him initially remained half uneaten. That shows how enjoyable it was!

Tate and Richard stop for a photo shoot.

Gotta love their English translation!

In the afternoon we went to Tokyo Skytree. This is a fairly new broadcasting tower, which has an observation deck up the top. It is so tall, at 634 metres high, that it beats Canton Tower.

Tokyo Skytree

Skytree was very busy which meant viewing space at every window section was at a premium. We often had to wait for a time for a spot. It was cool to see parts of Tokyo looking cloudy and ‘foggy’ and other parts bright and sunny.

Friday
Another Tate friendly day was planned. We went to the Shinagawa Aquarium where we enjoyed looking at lots of different fish. The highlights being a dolphin show and then later a seal show. The dolphins were pretty amazing jumping through hoops, over sticks held high and using a hula hoop. Tate loved it and asked for “more dolphin”. Pity he was asleep for the repeat show!

Dolphin tricks!