Yamanakako 3 OR How TGS kept me too busy to do anything at all

outside of work, or even work.

But where did we leave off?



Oh yeah, the next morning. We went to the lake!





We actually did have an adventure in one of those little swan paddle boats, but first we hopped on the BIG MAMA:



It's Princess Oddete [sic]! That was a pretty nice time. Nice breeze on the lake, chillin'. I saw this great t-shirt:



I would totally wear that. I later found a bunch of cool ones on sale near Mandarake Nakano, but unfortunately they were all too big. Would've been sort of pointless.

Here are some pix I took of Toru feeding the fish AFTER our crazy paddle boat fiasco where we I was the source of locomotion for probably over a half hour during which we managed to beach ourselves and break the steering wheel. Well, to be fair, the steering may have already been busted and actually had a hand in our beaching. It was fun to hop out and push, anyways.





After that we finally had lunch. I was a little disappointed that we went to Denny's:



AT FIRST, but then I realized how completely not-Denny's it actually is. I got tendon with soba on the side.

Once that was finished it was pretty much time to get back on the bus to Tokyo. Little did we know we'd be on it for FOUR HOURS. There was some traffic:



Granted, this is the one of the more scenic traffic jams you'll see, but it was still a pain. They actually had to pull over once so Toru could go pee on a bush (although some other kid ran with him) but there was also a more general break at a real bathroom. Anyways, a bit of a haul.

We hit up a dept store on the way home for dinner where I had mabo tofu, since it's one of the most awesome things you can eat. I took a couple pictures when we got home:

of the kitchen


of my commandeering of the low table in the living room



of Toru and what eventually hatched out of that mysterious egg


I'm going to keep updating as I have (or steal) a moment here and there, so keep checking back...maybe...if you want.