We came, we saw, we survived!

That applies to the city of Tokyo, Tokyo Disneyland and the Chinese Consulate. In case you didn't know, Tokyo in July is hot and sticky-thus so are we most of the time. We've ended up here for 6 days for the primary purpose of getting our Chinese tourist visas so we can get back into the country. To amuse ourselves while waiting we braved the crowds at Tokyo Disneyland. It is a replica of Disneyland in Anaheim-except of course the characters speak and sing in Japanese. Speaking characters is odd to begin with, but when you hear Japanese it is even stranger. Li only cried once, but I think that's par for the course for a hot, overstimulated child. The highlight of our day was watching her boundless excitement as we went through "It's a Small World". Of course we were also secretly proud that she could identify most of the nationalities in the ride. She also chose a souvenir with high breaking potential for us to tote around two countries. All in all a successful event.

Our Disneyland was the Chinese Consulate. We knew we had to to turn in our passports on Monday in order to get them back Thursday or Friday. After a series of subways and map checks we found the Consulate by following the long security line leaving the building. We had approximately 30 minutes before the Consulate closed for the day at Noon. It was a combination of 'The Amazing Race' meets Arts and Crafts. First, security check in Japanese and next all get into the elevator to the 3rd floor. Open to organized mayhem. Steve went to the left, to get a number. Shana went to the right, for the correctly positioned passport and Japan visa xerox copies. Li was the runner to move the passports to Steve for the number since Shana's line was slower. Then to figure out the copy machines and to keep all papers collated while listening for our number. Then on to gluing on passport pictures which we already had (so skipped the photo booth). Then our number came up and all our papers were accepted and we were given a time to return in 3 days. They did not want any of our documentation for our August Chinese housing or travels which we were warned to collect. Fifteen minutes later, we were done with that much time to spare. Celebrate by all going to Denny's.