Tokyo - Roppongi Hills Reprise, Mori Tower

On Monday, we headed back to Roppongi Hills (the Spider Statue below is from Roku Roku Plaza in Roppongi Hills) and met up with another family from Maplewood who had just moved to Tokyo. We had not met this family before, but were put in touch by friends. (Our second successful "blind date" of the weekend!).

We all went up to the top of Mori Tower, which has great views and a very cool outdoor roof deck (that is also a heli-pad). The kids also spent some time inside inscribing wishes on mini-koi-nobori that were tied with string to a carp-shaped wall hanging in honor of Boy's Day. Jacob wished for "Peace and more weekends." From his mouth to God's ears!

(That is the Tokyo Tower behind us in the picture from the Mori Tower roof-deck). After a quick lunch with our new friends, we headed back to the airport to fly back to Kobe. We all had a great time. In fact, they also are keeping a blog about their experiences in Tokyo, and here is their post about our great visit together - Maplewoodians Unite!

As previously mentioned, one of the themes of our weekend was Jacob's pick-up artistry. Earlier in the weekend, he had befriended two 6 year old girls on a train and walked off holding hands with both of them and had also given Bob a serious run for his money for the affections of Maho! Rico Suave over here was back at work on this train ride back to catch the airport monorail. This time Jacob split up the attractive Japanese woman pictured below from her hipster boyfriend by plopping himself between them on the seat. (Lauren later joined, moving the boyfriend even further away.)

To boot, this random woman with her back to the picture then came over and presented Jacob and Lauren cell phone/backpack straps as a gift. Amazing.

We all had a great trip, but it was also nice and comforting to be back home on Rokko Island. Jacob literally jumped for joy and said "Yay. We're back in Kobe!"