The week after Thanksgiving was the annual Crawford Disneyland Adventure (I don't know if they actually go only annually). Chieko and I went, too. We haven't been to Disneyland for more than 20 years together. (I did go with Sara on Take Your Daughters to Work Day 13 years ago, but that's a whole nuther story.)
We arrived on Tuesday evening, and on Wednesday morning we drove to Little Tokyo in LA on our ongoing Best Ramen in America quest. Of course, the ramen shop Chieko had found on the Internet didn't open at 11:30 as the sign indicated it would. The girl working there said in very broken English that they didn't have enough soup. "We have some soup, but it takes ten hours to prepare. We also have some little soup, but we may need it for dinner. I don't know when we will open." I asked, "Do you have any idea, say in 30 minutes, or 1 p.m. or 5 p.m.?" She said, "Yes." So we ate at another ramen shop. It was pretty good. On the way out, we noticed the first shop was serving customers. Santa in San Mateo is still on my first-pick list, along with the Sapporo ramen shop in Vancouver, BC.
Then we drove to San Diego and watched the sun set.
The weather on Thursday was wonderful. We spent the day at California Adenture with the Crawford Gang. We really enjoyed Soaring Over California and the Bugs show--Ooo! But mostly we enjoyed seeing John, Misa, Caroline, Elliot, and Mei Mei. When we met the C Gang in the parking lot of the Best Western Park Place (don't stay anywhere else--you can't get closer to Disneyland), Caroline ran up to me excitedly, jumped into my arms and said, "Hi, Grandpa!" She is so happy to see people. She did the same to Kate, when Kate met us at Space Mountain on Friday evening. Caroline spent most of the time hanging with her cousins, so we didn't see too much of her, but we spent a lot of time with the remaining four, and especially Elliot.
We made the mistake of taking Caroline and Elliot on the Tower of Terror first thing. Elliot didn't want to go and wouldn't stand up straight under the you-have-to-be-this-tall post. We coaxed him in and kept telling him it would be fun. It was not fun. It scared him to death. He didn't want to go on any other rides and refused to stand tall enough to go on Soaring Over California. (Susan got him to go later, and he loved it.) After a while he did find that he actually enjoyed the roller coaster rides. Caroline, on the other hand, had wanted to go on Tower of Terror. Afterward she said she enjoyed it, but when I asked whether she wanted to go again, she said, "Maybe tomorrow." She loved the other wild coaster rides, though. As soon as we got off Space Mountain, she asked, "Can we go again?"
I guess Elliot can be a bit of a wampaku (he set off the buzzer at the airport, so a search of his pockets ensued, and that turned up house keys, a metal bracket to a car seat, and a screw driver), but he was a lot of fun. We spent lunch at Mimi's on Friday drawing on his place mat and identifying the items printed there. If he didn't know what something was, he said, "Boo boo." And then laughed and laughed. That became a joke between us for lunch. When we said good-bye the next morning (we came home, while the C Gang was staying until Tuesday), as I was walking away, Elliot said, "Boo boo" and laughed. He's a really cute boy. The only kid I know who willingly puts his hand up to hold when crossing parking lots and roads or getting in line for a ride.
At Disneyland on Friday evening, Mark had taken Caroline on the Go Coaster several times--she kept getting back in line. Elliot decided he'd like to go, so I got in line with him. But he wanted to go with Mark and grabbed his hand (Mark's still his favorite, but I'm working on what bribery I can devise to change that). Expecting to deal with a sulking three-year-old or a tantrum, I said, "Caroline's already going with Mark. Do you want to go with me?" To my surprise he said, "OK" and was happy. I was just impressed with how happy he is to do what he's asked.
On Thursday evening, we watched the Disney Christmas Parade. Then Chieko and I watched the fireworks set to Christmas music over Sleeping Beauty's Castle, while the kids went off to bed. We decided the fireworks were the best entertainment of the day, aside from hanging out with the kids. "Silent Night" ended with a single slow-shooting star.
Mei fed popcorn to Elliot while waiting for the parade.
Friday morning we woke up to pouring rain, which lasted until mid-afternoon. Chieko and I spent Friday morning walking right onto all the rides we wanted--Small World, Pirates, Indiana Jones. Because of the rain, there were zero lines anywhere, except at the new Nemo claustrophobia submarine, which we didn't ride. I'll take rain to people any day. But by lunchtime we were pretty well soaked, despite buying ponchos along with all the other die-hards at the Quick Stop. So we dried off, changed to dry clothes and went back to hang out with the C Gang.
On Saturday morning, we walked to Goofy's Kitchen in the Disneyland Hotel, where we stuffed ourselves on the biggest and tastiest (and most expensive) breakfast buffet I've ever enjoyed. Ham, omelets, creme brulee, Mickey pancakes and waffles, cakes, bread puddings, pizza, and a whole lot more. But not just the food, Disney characters came around to the table signing autographs and entertaining the kids every so often. Goofy also gathered the kids a couple of times during breakfast to dance the Macarena or play cups in a band.
Saturday afternoon, Chieko and I went to Torrance to find more ramen restaurants. The one we chose, Shin-sen-gui, served a "Hakata" (Fukuoka) ramen. The pork-based soup was very good. The noodles were skinny, too skinny, and too soft. The barbecued pork slices were good, but too thin. We gave the shop about a B- overall. We also stopped at Mitsuwa grocery store in Torrance. That has to be the biggest and busiest Japanese store in the United States. I thought I was back in the lower floor of Itoyokado department store in Japan. And the seven or eight checkout lines were 20 people deep. We actually went into the store twice, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening on the way to the airport, and the crowds were even larger the second time. The store is very close to the U.S. Toyota headquarters and Hitachi.
We also drove to Redondo Beach, where we nearly froze in the chilling wind, and watched the sun set. And we looked at all the crab and fish and sea urchin shops on Redondo Beach's Board Walk. Chieko would like to live there just for the fish.
I'm not dead yet. New York City at Christmas is a wonderful place to remind me of this. I went to visit with the folks at the Economist Intelligence Unit, which is doing research for us. But I also got to see the tree and ice skating at Rockefeller Center, along with 100,000,000 pennies school children collected for charity.
