Earthquake

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St Patrick's Day Parade

Today we went to the St Patrick's Day parade in Omotesando. Omotesando is the Sloane Street of Tokyo but on a much larger scale - it has every luxury brand you can think of and each shop is absolutely massive. Considering the price of property in Tokyo you'd be forgiven for thinking that maybe the designers charge so much for their products just so they can pay the rent on their Tokyo retail space.

Anyway the St Paddy's Parade was great fun - there was everything from the traditional (baton twirlers, Irish dancers, leprechauns, U2 tribute, walking pints of Guinness, penny whistle players, Irish wolfhounds and red setters) to the more tenuous (French Bretons, Japanese bagpipe players, and

Here is Aoife pretending she is in the parade - waving her flag and doing a twirl.

Cherry Blossoms

We've had a busy day today - we went to Shinjuku Park which is apparently one of the nicest parks in the city. Tokyo is just about to enter cherry blossom season which is a big thing for the Japanese. Shinjuku park has hundreds of huge old cherry blossom trees so in a couple of weeks it will be pink blossom as far as the eye can see which will be amazing. I just love cherry blossom. We found one tree today that had already blossomed and there were loads of people taking photos of it. She had a great time running around the park.

Needless to say she had a great time running around the park. She gets lots of attention from the Japanese women I guess for being blonde/foreign - in fact one girl was trying to take a photo of her today in the park with her phone but I don't think Aoife stood still long enough for her to get a picture.

Aquarium

This weekend has been a bit cold and wet - we went to an aquarium yesterday. There seem to be several in Tokyo so we just went to the nearest one but it was v good. It had this big tunnel you can walk through so you're surrounded by all the huge fish (sharks, rays etc) and Aoife was fascinated. She kept saying "wow!" and "wow-wee!". They also had penguins and all other kinds of weird deep sea creatures and we managed to keep Aoife awake for long enough to watch the dolphin show which she absolutely loved and was smiling and clapping lots :) In the evening we met up with Victoria and her husband David for dinner at their gym/club place again and Aoife had a very posh tea with her own little jelly dessert in a tiny mini plastic martini-style glass. Of course she didn't eat that but instead was scoffing the dry chocolate cheerios that I had in my bag as back-up snacks. We didn't get back until after 8pm so Aoife has had a monster long lunchtime nap today and in fact is still asleep - nothing will seem to wake her! We're having a lazy day in the apartment eating lots and watching movies.

Our new apartment

We've had a quiet one as it's been a bit rainy here in Tokyo. We were going to go to this place called Odaiba today which is a big shopping and entertainment district but it's right on the coast so we figured with the tsunami warnings that perhaps it wouldn't a good idea, although it turned out the tsunami was only 30cm high in the end! Gary is feeling really tired anyway because he was up in the middle of the night watching the Six Nations rugby at some Irish pub nearby so he's catching up on some sleep now while Aoife has her lunchtime nap.

We got the keys to our apartment yesterday which is very exciting. It was good to go and have another look around as it reassured me that we'd made a good decision. It's really big and spacious and Aoife was having great fun running up and down the hallway. I'm looking forward to moving in although that won't happen for another three weeks as we're still waiting for all our stuff to come over by sea freight.

Victoria has invited me on a long weekend trip to Beijing with her and two other girls in a few weeks time so we booked our flights last week. It'll be over a long weekend here (like a bank holiday weekend) so we're going Thursday evening to Monday evening which means Gary will get to spend a full four days on his own with Aoife!

Well it's lovely and sunny outside now after a rainy start so perhaps we'll go for a little wander outside when Gary and Aoife wake up. I feel like all I've done today is slob about and eat a lot of bread and cake - bleurgh!

Arisugawa Park

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Grand Hyatt Hotel

Here is Aoife talking on the phone and spotting cars from the window.

The first few days are going well although admittedly it just feels like we're on holiday at the moment. The jet lag is a killer! It's bad enough adjusting to 9 hours time difference just me and Gary let alone throwing Aoife into the equation. The first night she was wide awake from 4am and so we were up and about with nowhere to go. We ended up wandering around the area near the hotel which is a big nightlife spot so we looked rather odd pushing a toddler around in a pram amongst the hardcore party-goers of Tokyo who were still going at 5am. Everywhere was shut apart from McDonalds so we ended up having egg and sausage McMuffins and tea amongst a load of still-out-at-5am teenagers (or maybe they were in their 20s and I'm just getting old).

Saturday and Sunday didn't go much better with Aoife awake (and hungry and wanting to play) during the night from11pm til 4am and 2am til 5am respectively. By Monday we were all feeling very tired and Gary had his first day at work. Aoife and I went to her first Music Together class in the afternoon which she seemed to love. In Music Together we all sit in a circle, sing songs, clap, dance around, play instruments and other such silly stuff which all the children adore.