Week 1, Part 1: Flying to Japan with a Toddler... and an Encounter with Bidet Toilets

Hello friends and family! As we are starting a new chapter of our lives here in Japan, we are also starting a new blog so everyone can ride this roller coaster along with us!

We will start with the airport. We left from the Portland Oregon airport on August 8 at 12:30 pm, with a scheduled arrival time of 3:00 pm the next day, August 9, in the Tokyo Japan airport. Factoring in the time change, it was a 10 1/2 hour flight. (Japan is 15 hours ahead of Oregon). So, upon arrival in Japan it felt like 1:00 am.

Now I'm sure you're all wondering how 17-month-old Jordan did with all this. Here's a picture of him at the beginning of the flight. He was doing all right. He was tired from all the traveling we did from Salt Lake to Portland, but he was ok.

Then he slept for about an hour shortly after takeoff. *yay!* Then he didn't sleep. At all. For the entire rest of the flight (about 2:00 pm till arrival at what felt like 1:00 am). So we had a cranky toddler for the majority of the flight.

For those who want tips, here is our arsenal of toddler entertainment we brought, in reverse order of effectiveness (how long it occupied him for), #1 being the most effective.

9) A Water Wow book. It is basically a reusable coloring book that, when colored on with the water pen, changes colors. When it dries it goes back to white. Jordan colored for a few minutes, then lost interest. The little boy in front of us, however (who appeared to be about 2-3 years old), loved it and colored on it for far longer than Jordan did.

8) Sticker books. Jordan spent a few minutes peeling stickers off the book and sticking them on, but again quickly lost interest.

7) Snacks. Goldfish, Cheerios, Gerber puffs, squeeze pouches, and freeze dried yogurt melts. These bought us 10-15 minutes here and there whenever he got hungry.

6) Animal flash cards. He likes sorting through the cards and being told what each animal is (along with the sign language for each one, if we knew it).

5) Mini magna-doodle. Jordan enjoys scribbling on it and erasing, but he also loves to make other people draw things for him. Usually Elly (his favorite character from his favorite TV show, Pocoyo) or kitties.

4) Masking tape. We brought a roll of masking tape and allowed him to pull off as much tape as he wanted and stick it to things. His favorite part of this was pulling off pieces of tape and sticking them to his face and neck. And then giving bunched up pieces of tape as "presents" to people, usually the Japanese teenage schoolgirl sitting directly behind him. This occupied him for quite a while.

3) Finger puppets. We bought a package of 10 different animal finger puppets and stuck them on our fingers and made them do silly things. Jordan rather enjoyed this and would take the puppets off our fingers (or his fingers) and then make us put them back on again, over and over for quite some time. He also made the teenage girl behind us do finger puppets for him.

2) A vibrating light-up back massager. It looks like these, and the feet light up whenever you push the button, which added to the entertainment especially when the lights on the plane were turned off.

This ended up being our go-to toy. Most of the time when he was cranky, we could pull out this massager again and he'd quiet down and play with it. He would turn it on and off again repeatedly, which was entertaining by itself (kids LOVE buttons at this age) or just turn it on and then hold it, put it on his face or body, and try to massage other people's heads with it. We killed probably at least an hour or more total just using this massager alone.

1) the iPad, with a few seasons of Pocoyo downloaded off Netflix. Normally I don't let Jordan watch more than 10-20 minutes of TV a day (it's almost always Pocoyo), but if there was ever a time where I was going to make an exception to this rule, it was a 10 1/2 hour plane flight with an abnormally cranky kid. So he watched a LOT of Pocoyo. It saved our sanity several times.

We would have brought more books if we had them, but we had packed almost all his books into our storage unit already, minus two of his favorites that he had already grown quite tired of by this point in our vacation.

Whenever he started getting super cranky and refused all his favorite toys, we let him walk laps around the plane, smile at the large group of Japanese schoolgirls on the flight with us (who smiled and cooed and squealed at him every time he passed by), and make friends with the little boy sitting in front of us, and that distracted him for a while. Here is a video of Jordan playing with his new friend. (When I figure out how to embed videos, I will try to do so instead of linking them).

Walking laps around the plane was his favorite activity by far. He probably would have walked laps around the plane for most of the entire flight if we'd let him. He LOVES walking and exploring. But we were restricted from doing it many times, by either the seatbelt sign being turned on, or by the flight attendants being in the aisles with drink or meal carts.

Around 7:30 pm (his normal bedtime) we put him in pajamas and tried to do his bedtime routine as best we could while buckled in plane seats, but to no avail. He just screamed and was plenty tired, but wouldn't fall asleep. So he was just super cranky and we spent a lot of time walking laps around the plane and watching Pocoyo.

By 10 pm he was ALMOST asleep in Christian's arms, but then the crew turned on the cabin lights and started bringing around the meal cart (between dinner and breakfast they offered us each a small container of ice cream). So he woke up completely and was very cranky. He didn't fall asleep at all for the rest of the flight. By the time we arrived in Tokyo, he was so tired that he was just hysterical and wouldn't stop crying. Pocoyo was the only thing that saved us as we were getting off the plane.

Whenever you arrive to a new duty station, you are assigned a "sponsor" whose duty it is to pick you up from the airport, make sure you get to your lodging area okay, and kind of show you around and be there for you if you need something. So we planned on meeting Christian's sponsor at the airport upon picking up all our bags, and then heading straight for the shuttle that went from the airport to Camp Zama (the army post we'd been stationed at). We arrived at 3 pm local time and the shuttle was supposed to leave for Camp Zama at 4. Then we were crossing our fingers that Jordan would fall asleep on the bus ride (2-3 hours to Camp Zama).

So we picked up all our bags, met his sponsor, and headed out to wait for the shuttle. Here is a picture of Jordan while we waited for the shuttle.

Score! Finally asleep!

4:00 came and went. No shuttle appeared. Christian's sponsor called, and was told that the shuttle had arrived on time and didn't see anyone waiting. So the shuttle left and would return again for its next scheduled pickup at 7:00 pm. They told us they wouldn't call the bus driver to turn around to get us (even though we would have been the only ones on it and it had only been 5 minutes since it left), so we'd just have to wait at the airport till 7. Apparently we'd been waiting at the wrong place, and all the US government shuttles came to a different pickup location.

Awesome.

So we turned around and found some chairs to chill in at the airport. We found a quiet corner, unpacked the mattress from Jordan's pack and play, transferred him quietly from the stroller to the mattress, and let him sleep there.

He got a lot of double and triple takes from people going up and down the escalators.

Meanwhile, I tried out the bathrooms. I went into a stall and was faced with this contraption:

Whoa.

It has a CONTROL PANEL.

This toilet... has a SPEAKER. Apparently, the Japanese are so private about their bathroom habits that whenever you go in to do your business, you are supposed to press the "flushing sound" button and turn up the volume as you deem necessary to mask any bodily function sounds you might make.

(I have even heard that some fancier bidet toilets have an option to play music while you go. I am unsure whether this music is supposed to be to mask sounds, or for your own entertainment during toileting...? And will people outside the stall judge you on whether or not you decide to play the music? Fortunately, the toilet I used didn't have this option, so I didn't have to worry about that).

I was terrified that I'd press the wrong button at the wrong time and get sprayed in the face with toilet water. Or that the bidet function would be more like.... SUDDEN ENEMA! And then I would yelp and everyone outside the stalls would laugh their heads off about that stupid American inside the stall using the bidet for the first time. But I was pleasantly surprised. You sit down, you do your business, you press the button to spray yourself off. And guys, bidets are actually pretty cool. You feel so much cleaner at the end than you do if you just use toilet paper. The water is warm, and the water pressure is just enough to spray you clean. Nothing scary. And at the end I assume you are supposed to pat dry with toilet paper (although when I went into the stall none of the toilet paper was even unwrapped... leaving me to wonder how everyone else dried off... do the Japanese just walk around with wet butts and air dry? Or was the toilet paper just very recently replaced?)

Anyway, after my adventure with the bidet toilet, we were hungry. So we told Christian's sponsor to keep an eye on Jordan (still sleeping) while we went to the McDonald's in the airport (the only familiar American food we could find). Everything on the menu was in Japanese. We walked in and walked up to the counter and the cashier said something to us in Japanese. I looked at Christian and said hesitantly to the cashier, "Do you speak English?" She replied "A little," and flipped the menu over to reveal that the back of the menu had English on it. We pointed and used simple words to communicate our order, and were finally able to get our burgers and eat.

We woke Jordan up and fed him right before the shuttle arrived at 7, we went to the right location this time and got on the shuttle, and ended up getting to our hotel ("temporary housing") on Camp Zama at 10 pm (or what felt like 8:00 am to us). We were tired and zonked out!

More to come soon! Keep an eye out for our next blog post! Love you all!

Christian and Brittany