Family vacation: Tokyo with a toddler

By Frank Gruger

My wife and her best friend recently took our one-year-old daughter to Tokyo because they always wanted to see Tokyo, and because she loves Japanese toys and wants to instill that love in our daughter!

She was surprised to find that Tokyo was not nearly as expensive a family vacation spot as conventional wisdom would suggest. She avoided the central business districts and found a safe, clean Toyko hotel in the Shiodome district (she felt the more obvious Ginza and Shibuya districts were too crowded, noisy and dirty for a baby) at a rate that would be a steal in NYC and was on par with prices in any major U.S. city.

Taxis are expensive, so she did a lot of walking. With a one-year-old that meant bringing a stroller and a sling. Strollers will get you most places, but Sundays on the streets of Harajuku, or anywhere during rush hour, they’re not feasible. We think the sling is best for international travel with a baby.

While almost any department store would have had a interesting selection of toys, Kiddie Land in Harajuku was their destination. No discounts, but six solid floors of toys and plenty of Hello Kitty!

Eating was a challenge for a number of reasons. Most restaurants are very smoky by American standards. While there are non-smoking sections, it can feel they are there in name only. It was difficult to avoid exposing our daughter to second-hand smoke. Some restaurants were worse than others; so it paid to pop in first and check.

My wife recommends bringing your own formula and baby food on a family vacation to Tokyo. Japanese baby formula didn’t agree with our little one, and mixing it was guesswork as the instructions are only in Japanese!

Fish is a base of almost all traditional Japanese cuisine, and it’s difficult to avoid meat in general. If you don’t like fish or are a vegetarian like my wife, you may find yourself needing to avoid traditional Japanese restaurants. My wife is a pretty adventurous eater otherwise, but even she found herself mostly eating at Western-style restaurants in order to find vegetarian options and because they seemed to beless smoky.

Relatives thought we were crazy when we planned a family vacation to Tokyo with a one year old, but outside of being cognizant of a few cultural differences, my wife and daughter found it to be a fun and rewarding trip.

Related Orbitz resources:

• Family vacation
• Tokyo hotel
  

Frank Gruger works to improve the user experience of Orbitz.com. With the loving encouragement of his wife, his daughter saw the streets of London, Venice, Rome, and Tokyo, and swam in the Pacific Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and Sagami Bay — all before her first birthday. Phew!

Tagged: Family time