Back to the Old Neighborhood

On our first day in Tokyo Madeline and I decided we wanted to take Jackson back to our old neighborhood in Minato-ku. She was ten when we lived in Japan, Jackson was two, and since he has very few memories from that time I thought it was a great idea. And it was.

Madeline is a born city girl. She may have grown up in suburbia but she knows how to navigate around the unfamiliar and has no issue figuring out subway systems. She did have the advantage of living here before so certain things did come back to her, but we hadn’t been able to explore all of Tokyo. Y’all it’s an incredibly large city.

This girl grabbed the maps and got us from point A to B to C and back again like a pro. She tried explaining how it worked to Jack, but he was much more interested in the station’s features like the pasmo and vending machines. I can’t say I blame him. They are pretty cool and serve really refreshing drinks (and snacks), but no, I haven’t seen the underwear vending machines yet. Ew.

We arrived in Azabu-Juban around 9 in the morning. It was already hot and humid, but we could get past it because we were there for one reason: to shop at our favorite French bakery, Mont Thabor. We would walk the 20 minutes at least twice a week to pick up milky scrolls, caramel sticks (think donut sticks covered in caramel icing) and creamy caramel buns.

Mont Thabor carries the savory as well as the sweet, but we've always favored the sugary pastries and rolls and tend to stick with those. We gave Jackson a few minutes to rest before heading to Starbucks for my caffeine injection and continuing even further back into our old neighborhood.

We used to live in a high-rise apartment building on the 21st floor. It was close to a small playground, relatively near Madeline’s bus route to her school, and across the street from a market. All in all it was pretty convenient, but what made it such a stunner were the views. We could see all of Tokyo from our apartment and on a good day, Mt. Fuji. What made it incredibly cool, however, was the view of Tokyo Tower, Tokyo’s answer to the Eiffel Tower.

Right outside the windows of our living space we were almost eye level with the observation deck. Every celebration or holiday that occurred, we’d see the glittering announcements and fireworks from front row seats, the lights dazzling and dancing through the windows of our apartment. It was such a unique living experience, and though we knew we couldn’t see the apartment itself, we stopped by the building, took a stroll through our old market (and reminiscing over the brilliance of packaged crustless bread), then headed up a small hill to Tokyo Tower.

I’ll be honest. It’s a tourist trap, but it’s a fun one. They have all the souvenir shops on the second level and a few fast food options you’ll be familiar with, some not (get the waffles with ice cream from Pink Dot-you’ll be glad you did), but if you go down to the first level you can buy your tickets to the observation deck and ride all the way up. If we thought our views from the apartment were stunning, the 36o degree scope of all of Tokyo is absolutely breathtaking.

There used to be a wax museum on the 3rd floor of the Tower which was pretty bad, but you know me-and Jackson-we threw ourselves into it wholeheartedly. He’s so much like his sister, such an adventuresome spirit, and venturing there on our first day back in the country brought back some wonderful memories.

Who knows what else will be stirred by heading back to our old stomping grounds? I can’t say for sure, but something tells me with all the new experiences we’ll have over the next few years the new memories will stack up higher than the tip of our former neighboring tower.