Robotics Team

Nate had an on-again/ off-again relationship with the robotics team. He liked doing robotics and he liked going to competitions, but he didn't always get along with the advisor.  To be fair, she was very inconsistent with what she asked and what she expected and would periodically come after students for no apparent reason. Nate was manufacturing lead (self appointed).  He traveled around the city for several competitions and stayed after school most days to go to Robotics. Some competitions they did pretty well, especially for a team that was as new as his team was.

 

Japan

 Joe's favorite cousin, Nathan, has lived in Japan for many many years. Since our Nate has the same name as him, we decided to go visit him and bring Nate along for the trip.  We had some time after Christmas before my new job started.

We flew into Toyko, but immediately went south to see Hiroshima.  We got to ride a bullet train down, which in itself was an amazing experience.  We saw the Hiroshima museum and walked around the Peace memorial grounds.

When we were done, we got another bullet train up to Kyoto.  We got there later than we wanted to, so we walked around and saw a couple of temples, and then we went to a Ramen making class.  

The next day we went back to Tokyo.  We went and saw Akihabera, which we realized wasn't really for us.  We also went to the Tokyo art museum and saw a Monet exhibit.  It was a traveling exhibit, but the line was super long and the works that were in the exhibit were not his most popular.We also went by Shibuya Crossing and got some food.  We then went to the Team Lab museum.

After all that, we went and met Joe's cousin at one of the train stations to go across town to his house. While visiting him, we went to Japanese baths, we had sushi at a restaurant that served it on a conveyer belt, played games with some of their friends, went to church with them and had a picnic in a large park.  At the park we talked with a bonsai tree master and saw some of his ancient trees.

That night, we rode a train all the way across Tokyo to go see Tokyo Disney.  I had read how to do it to get on all the rides and we were able to not just see Disney Sea, but also Disney Land Tokyo while we were there.  It got really rainy at the end of the day and we were exhausted, so we went back to our hotel.

The last day in Tokyo we went and saw Tokyo tower and the Imperial Palace grounds.  

Some things we noted- the bathrooms were super nice. They had background music and scents and stalls that were tightly closed.  

The subway system was insane. Each station could have 20 exits through so many tunnels  We stored out bags one day in the Tokyo station and then we couldn't remember where we put them, but it took us an hour to figure it out.  The station had multiple wings and levels and was very complex.