Noseshh

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 a foot 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!

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Tokyo Tower

Move to Oakwood apartment

This afternoon we finally moved to the corporate apartment in a nice area known as Azabu Juban and what a relief it is to be here. I never thought I could be so pleased to see a highchair and a microwave.

They have a great foreign supermarket just around the corner from this apartment so I went in there and bought lots of familiar foods (at vast expense) so this I've just had some toast with Bon Maman marmalade and a cup of tea. It's amazing how good simple food can taste when you've had to eat out or off room service for 6 days.

I've just unpacked after putting Aoife to bed and am feeling very tired. We thought we had cracked Aoife's jet lag the other night when she slept through apart from waking at 11pm for a bottle (admittedly I had also given her calpol for a cough she has so that probably helped her sleep) but last night it was back to waking for three hours between 11pm and 2am and then again at around 3am. I think it's just because she's waking hungry in the night as it would normally be her tea time when it's 2am here.

It's been hard to get her to eat proper meals during the day because she's drinking so much milk in the night. Hopefully being in the apartment and having the kitchen and the highchair will help make mealtimes more successful and in fact this evening she ate a good bowl of pasta so cross fingers she sleeps better tonight. The jet lag has definitely been difficult for her and even though I'm sure it's only a matter of time before she adjusts these past 5 days have felt like weeks...

Aoife's little red car

Gary works in the Mori Tower which is a landmark in Tokyo and within an area of the city called Roppongi Hills which happens to be another big shopping complex and is also where our hotel is based so Gary can literally fall out of bed into work which is very handy.

On the bottom level of the shopping complex they have this great little children's area (i.e. rest area for parents) which is open to anyone to come and use and they have facilities for feeding, changing and playing. This is where I took this photo of Aoife very happily driving the little red car.

Being in the hotel is pretty challenging as space is really limited especially as we have nine suitcases of stuff (at Heathrow they were going to charge us £1500 in excess luggage but we managed to negotiate and re-jig a few things around so it came down to £500).

Anyway we are feeling pretty cramped in the hotel room although admittedly buying Aoife a huge inflatable football at the airport which I inflated yesterday and the pop-up tent we got in Ginza both haven't helped the space situation!

The other thing with the hotel is that I can't really make any food for Aoife so finding things for her to eat is tough especially as very few of the restaurants around here are baby friendly (despite the fact that the Japanese absolutely love children). I finally had success today with a meal when I went out and bought a packet of weetabix and a pint of milk but other than that she's been eating whatever random stuff I can get my hands on (mostly Organix cheese and herb puffs from the UK).

The jet lag is still awful but hopefully we'll be over the worst of it soon and cross fingers by the end of the week we'll almost have adjusted to the new time zone and be feeling less zombie-ish.

Trip to Ginza

Our first weekend in Tokyo and we decided to venture over to Ginza which is a huge shopping area - streets upon streets lined with more shops than I've ever seen. The shopping in Tokyo is really incredible - it's just a shame everything is so much more expensive here than anywhere else in the world so you can't actually buy anything.

In Ginza we found this great toy store which was ridiculously expensive. We bought a pop-up tent and a drawing toy for Aoife and must have spent about £70 when you could probably pick up the same things in Tesco for a tenner each.

One way ticket to Tokyo

The flight was pretty tough as Aoife didn't want to sit still and found it hard to go to sleep despite having a business class seat all to herself. Gary did all the hard work holding her and helping her sleep which she did for a few hours but not the 10 or 12 hours I had hoped!

Unfortunately the seat wasn't completely flat so when she did sleep she kept slipping down to the end so we had to keep an eye on her all the time and move her back up when she got too near to falling off which meant we didn't get much time to sleep. I can't begin to imagine how much harder it will be when we have to fly economy...