Traveling to Kyoto (With Kids)

    Last month, my parents visited us in Japan for the first time since we moved here. Their visit coincided with Japan's grand re-opening to tourists, which resulted in immediate and visibly denser crowds on the main streets. The country has been essentially closed for tourism the entire time we have been living here, and my parents were our first overseas guests. We brainstormed where to go, what to show them and feed them. Naturally, Kyoto came up as a must-go destination, as there are few cities as iconic of traditional Japanese culture as Kyoto. Autumn is an especially lovely time to visit, with all the autumn foliage covering its surrounding mountains and lending the temples and shrines an especially magnificent look. As you might predict, however, autumn is a busy time for tourism in Kyoto. We tried to circumvent this by arriving on a Thursday and leaving on Saturday, which meant not only lower hotel rates but also fewer lines. 

Getting Everyone to Kyoto

    Kyoto is hardly a side trip from Tokyo. It is on the other side of the country and about a six hour drive. But why drive with kids when the ever convenient Shinkansen is at your disposal? The Shinkansen itself serves as entertainment, especially when you build it up, as we did. You'll get to choose your Shinkansen bento at the station! By Shinkansen, it is a straight shot from Tokyo Station to Kyoto Station and takes 2.5 hours. Unlike airplane seats, you can't assume an empty seat will stay empty, because it might be reserved by someone boarding at one of the several stops along the way. I purchased a seat for E (tickets for children are half price), but not for M, whom we rotated among the adults. Also unlike airplanes, there are no attendants, and passengers are expected to contain and dispose of their own rubbish.

    The best thing about traveling via Shinkansen with kids is access to clean toilets. Another great thing, for us at least, is no vomiting. Both our kids get car sick but are ok on trains. Also, there is overhead bin space, storage space for strollers and suitcases in each car, as well as hooks next to each seat for quick-access bags. There are many great things about the Shinkansen, actually, but the last ones I will mention is the ample leg space and nice views of the Japanese countryside. 

Family Lunch at Kyoto Station

    I arrived in Kyoto with my parents and kids. My husband took a later train since he had to work that morning. With my parents and kids in tow, I figured it would be easiest to have lunch at Kyoto Station. As its name implies, it is the city's main station and has lots of restaurants and shops. We stopped at a restaurant serving traditional Japanese lunch sets. My mom had a set consisting of grilled fish, rice, miso soup, and several vegetable and tofu sides. My dad ordered obanzai, a traditional style of Japanese cuisine native to Kyoto that is characterized by an assortment of small dishes. I ate a chicken rice bowl and the kids had a shirasu rice bowl, both accompanied by rice, soup, and vegetable sides. This style of eating was actually convenient for kids. They assortment of small dishes kept them stimulated with different flavors, and the presentation was appealing. If they didn't like one thing, there were ten other dishes to try. 

The Hotel 

    Kyoto is famous for its ryokans, traditional Japanese inns. Many of them serve their own meals, and guests sleep on Japanese futon beds. Most charge by the guest rather than the room. My husband and I stayed in one the first time we visited Kyoto and enjoyed the ryokan's multi-course kaiseki dinner. It was a luxurious experience but not one suited for kids. While I prefer sleeping on futons with kids, kaiseki meals are multi-hour affairs. Plus, my parents were not keen on floor seating. As they reminded me, their bodies were too stiff to fold into these unaccustomed positions. For this trip, my criteria were comfort, familiarity/predictability, and reasonable rates. That brought us to the Hyatt Regency. 

Kiyomizu-dera at Sunset 

    Like most western hotels in Kyoto, Hyatt is located on the eastern part of the city, some distance from the main cluster of attractions. However, it is close to both Kyoto Station and one of the major temples, Kiyomizu-dera. We arrived at the hotel in the mid-afternoon via the free hotel shuttle from Kyoto Station. M had fallen into a deep asleep en route, seconds after declaring that she would not nap. I checked in, transferred M to a bed, sent E to my parents' room, and set about researching places for the next day. Having the benefit of speed as a solo traveler, Hiro arrived soon after. 

    Although only 2.5 hours away, traveling anywhere with kids can be a near full day production. It took me a few years to learn to take it easy on the first day of travel. Therefore the only activities on the evening agenda were hotel dinner and a 15 minute walk to Kiyomizu-dera, an ancient Buddhist temple that is also a UNESCO World Heritage site. 

With the grandparents.

    The walk from the hotel takes us down a picturesque Kyoto street full of artisan goods and food shops. It is not an easy walk with a stroller though, since the temple sits high upon a hill. Kyoto streets are also very narrow, even by normal Japanese standards. Instead of our usual umbrella stroller, I had borrowed an even more compact one from a friend. This one was lighter and folded into a neat square that made it easy to carry. Good thing we had it because the walk up involved a lot of stroller folding and unfolding. Kiyomizu-dera juts out high on the hillside with its iconic wooden stage. The sun was just starting to set as we arrived, presenting us with a sweeping view of cherry and maple trees bathed in golden light. 

    The walk back was just as nice. The shopping street looked picturesque against the setting sun. Some shops were closing but many were still open, like the vendor selling skewers of cheese wrapped in fried yuba (tofu skin). We also tried a couple of fruit popsicles that seemed to be a Kyoto speciality...maybe. They were not too sweet and had a mochi-like texture. This pre-dinner snack was out of the ordinary, but it was just as well because the uphill walk took a lot out of us at the end of this travel day. 

An Easy Dinner and a Good Night

    Dinner was at the hotel's Italian restaurant, which had excellent service and reasonably good food. I had chosen this place for its convenience with the goal of ending the day on a relaxing note. The next day would be our only full day in Kyoto, and I wanted everyone to be well rested. We had the kids bathed and in bed by 8:30pm. Maybe you can guess what happened. They somehow stayed up "talking" until close to 10pm. If I had all the money in the world, I would reserve suites every time we travel. For my kids, it is the difference between sleeping from 10pm-6am and sleeping from 9pm-7am. Regardless, we were all out by 10:30pm as a full day awaited us. 

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Raising Multilingual Kids

Being a multilingual family is our normal, but it's definitely a curiosity for most people. As a family, we juggle English, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. I say juggle because it feels that way. My spouse and I speak English to each other. Our kids speak Japanese with their dad. They speak Chinese with me. It sounds like a mess, and sometimes it is, but it somehow has worked us in the sense that this linguistic mishmash has not inhibited our ability to communicate with each other.

When we had E, we had a decision to make: how many languages would we teach her? English was a given since we lived in America. What about the other languages we spoke? Culture was as much part of it as language itself. But it would be a challenging road of consistency and awkwardness, since as parents our only common was English. At least one of us would have to speak to the baby in a language the other didn't fully understand. 

Before I delve into our odd little journey, let me explain our backgrounds. My husband is Japanese and was raised in Japan. He attended an international school, which is why he speaks English with an American accent. He also studied French during high school and university. So he is fluent in Japanese and English and can get by with basic French. I am Chinese but was raised in the U.S.. I lived in Spain briefly as a child and continued to study Spanish in university, where I studied abroad and attained a minor in Spanish. I have also been studying Japanese since arriving in Tokyo last year. So I am fluent in Mandarin, the Wu dialect, and English. I am now conversational (at best) in Spanish, having not spoken it in years, but my ability to read is better. On the other hand, I am barely literate in Chinese despite being completely fluent (a result of not attending Chinese school on the weekends while growing up in America). 

Which Languages to Prioritize?

From my perspective then, it wasn't a top priority for my kids to read and write Mandarin so long as they could speak it. I couldn't ask of them what I couldn't do myself. Also, a greater proportion of people in China compared to Japan speak English, probably because English has been an essential part of Chinese education for decades now. And since my husband's command of Japanese is better than my Chinese, it was natural to prioritize English and Japanese. 

My guiding principle is that no matter how many or how few languages they know, my kids must know them well. Speaking many languages but mastering none - this is what I wanted to avoid. 

Language as a Gateway to Culture

I have been steadily (but very slowly) studying Japanese for about a year. It's a language that totally immerses you in a different mindset: to speak Japanese is to think Japanese. The thing I find hardest about Japanese is all the double negatives: I don't want you to not do that. What?! It's hard for my English, or even Chinese, mind to wrap around. Communication here can be an art of evasiveness. This is an obvious way that the language reflects the culture, but it does in many other ways. 

There is a lot of discourse about what it means to be Japanese in the international community here, especially among expat kids and kids with one Japanese parent. For most, language is really a gateway to a culture. You can know a language and still not fully understanding the culture, but it's difficult to grasp the subtleties of a culture without knowing the language. So I wanted to give my kids a shot at fully embracing their Japanese identity. While they could always learn Japanese as adults, it would be harder to learn it, and it would be different from growing up having known it. In a way I suppose I am making a choice for them, but it's one that will pass them by if it's not made now. 

Is There Room for One More? 

Japanese and Chinese, though they share similarities, are vastly different languages with different grammar and writing systems. Written Japanese has four components: Romaji (the romanization of characters), Kanji (Chinese characters, though many are not the same as modern Chinese characters), Hiragana (Japanese characters), and Katakana (a different set of Japanese characters used for foreign words). Written Chinese has two components: Pinyin (also a romanization of Chinese, though different from Japan's) and the full set of 8,000 characters that the average Chinese adult knows. Despite a bit of overlap, Chinese and Japanese are really very different languages. For one, they don't sound at all alike. 

Growing up, Spanish was a big part of my life. I lived in Spain briefly as a child, spent summer vacations there, and studied abroad there. I minored in Spanish in college. Spanish language and culture has been an important part of my life and in many ways my identity as well. Because of it (and my Chinese illiteracy), I find myself more equipped to learn most European languages than Asian ones, including Japanese. This has influenced what books I read, what art I like, and my perspective on the world. It's a perspective I would like to share with my kids, even just a little. If you believe that language is a gateway to culture, which I do, then my hope is that someday my kids also study a language from the European continent. But it's only a hope and not an expectation. 

Right now

Right now E is learning how to read at her English-speaking school, so the focus is very much on English. While her English improves, it creeps into her other languages. She says things like, watashi wa freak out shita (I freaked out). So we just keep reminding her the Japanese or Chinese words for whatever she is saying. We have accepted that, especially at this age, her grasp of each language will naturally fluctuate depending on the circumstances. My best language is English, so I am in charge of reading all the English books at bedtime. The kids then rotate to their dad, who is in charge of reading the Japanese books. It may sound like a pain, but it's just our routine now. 

Learning how to write English. 

I think being a trilingual family wouldn't be so strange in some parts of the world, especially if the  languages have common roots. The biggest challenge for us is 1) how different our languages are and 2) we share only English as the common language. As the kids start primary school, I'm sure we will adjust as things change.