Report on the Birthday Weekend - part 2

Sunday we pulled our sore bodies out of bed and headed off to Tokyo to meet up with my Aunt Janet and Cousin Paige Cordell. They were in Japan with their Alaskan Taiko Drumming group.

The word taiko (太鼓) means simply "great drum" in Japanese. Outside Japan, the word is often used to refer to any of the various Japanese drums (和太鼓, 'wa-daiko', "Japanese drum", in Japanese) and to the relatively recent art-form of ensemble taiko drumming (sometimes called more specifically, "kumi-daiko" (組太鼓). -from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiko

Paige and her crew did an awesome job. It was also amazing to see her talking and joking with all her new Japanese friends in Japanese. In her Elementary school they start teaching the kids Japanese in kindergarten and have several native Japanese speakers on staff. The AK Cordells have even hosted a few of the Japanese interns that have come through their school. Happily one of those interns met up with us at the festival. Janet introduced us to Huck (he loved the book Huck Finn) with a tear in her eye. He was a much missed friend and became our tour guide for the afternoon. He led us to the Meiji Shrine and paraded us through the oddly dressed Japanese Hipsters that hang out near its entrance. Janet took oodles of pictures.

After dinner we parted ways for the night. We had gotten a night at the military hotel, The New Sanno. We had heard so many great things about the hotel. It was kind of a mixture of Motel 6 prices with much higher quality and comfort. We are really looking forward to going back there for Andy's birthday in a few weeks.

After our night of luxury we went down for some breakfast and a healthy portion of coffee before heading out to the train to find Tokyo Disney. We were to meet up with Janet and Paige at Splash Mountain around noon. The day was a blast. There was some rain in the morning, but nothing too terrible. We saw marching bands, screamed through Space Mountain, wondered what they were saying in the Haunted Mansion (it was all in Japanese), and snacked on flavored popcorn. It was amazingly like the Disneyland in California with a Japanese twist. You'll have to look through our pictures (Cordells in Japan) for the visual. Also, there will be some better pictures of the Taiko festival once we sort through Andy's photos.

After dinner we had to head back toward home. Andy had a full day of work staring him in the face and needed a full night of sleep. It was fantastic to see family and we look forward to more visitors this coming year.