When we first arrived Tokyo, everything was a bit daunting. I’ve been here many times before, but I’ve never been here with kids! So everything is all new to me when thinking of places to go.
Of course the town where we live has local playgrounds and children’s halls (jidokan) where we can spend the day, but I also like to take them to different places in the city. So I started researching child-friendly places where we could go. At first it was a bit of a challenge since a lot of websites about children’s places in Tokyo are in Japanese, with no English translations. I dug a bit more and found that there is a pretty large group of foreigners living in Japan with kids – either expatriates here on business or foreigners married to Japanese. Organizations like Association of Foreign Wives of Japanese, and websites like Japan With Kids have provided me with a lot of information. I’ve also been asking advice from other Japanese and non-Japanese mothers who have been living here longer than me. Hopefully they will be able to add their wealth of knowledge on our site too!
Maps are essential for getting around Tokyo because many areas don’t have streets laid out like Manahattan’s grid formation and not all street names are written in English unless it’s major tourist areas like Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ginza, Roppongi, etc. Plus the cities within Tokyo just seems so much more spread out than Manhattan. Not to mention the train fare gets pretty expensive – no such thing as a one-day, weekly, or monthly metro card train pass for unlimited travel. So if we go to Shinagawa, that’s where we will stay. Whereas in Manhattan, if the kids and I are downtown in Soho and decide to take the subway to midtown for dinner, it’s not too big a problem.
Anyhow back to maps….I really like the maps from Superfuture. It’s just too bad they don’t cover children’s places – well they do note some fun children’s clothing and toy shops. Of course Google Maps is great but the Japan map requires doing searches in Japanese, so I always need the help of my husband as my written Japanese is quite poor. Can anyone else recommend good maps of Tokyo?
I’m still continually on the search for interesting places to go with kids. The search is actually as fun as the find. Together with my two darlings Keiji and Arisa, I hope we can eventually compile a handy resource for other families to!
