Jack&kate&livie and the chocolate factory

It started out as a grumpy day. John had a lot of work to do. It was cold and wet. We all had spent too much time in doors. So as soon as John got his lecture submitted, we headed off to the end of the line in search of the chocolate factory we had heard good things about (who doesn't hear good things about chocolate factories!).

We almost didn't make it. There were potty incidents (needing them when they weren't around) and crowded train incidents and trouble finding the right coat incidents. But we plodded on, and the experience served as proof that it is ALWAYS better to get out of the house, and sometimes downright wonderful.

The Ishiya Chocolate Factory is famous for its Shiroi Koibito or "White Beloved Ones", two crispy cookies and white chocolate in between. It comes from the founder's description of snowflakes as "our white beloved ones" and apparently, among Japanese, these little cookies are THE thing to bring back when you have visited Hokkaido.

But going there is a little bit like walking into a world where Willy Wonka met the Lilliputians from Gulliver's Travels and they all decided to buy a bunch of toys on ebay and make chocolate while they were at it.

Let me explain. As soon as we walked in, they gave us each a Shiroi Koibito and these cookies are, indeed, delicious. But the tour of the factory was more than seeing the assembly lines chugging out sweets, although we did get to watch that. We also got to see a history of chocolate where a hologram of two little Japanese kids walked along a miniature display explaining the evolution of chocolate (take that, CNN... this place had its holograms in place LONG before you even tried to beam anyone in.)

And we also were exposed to some of the most unusual collections (rooms full of toys from the 1950s to the 1990s; hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of tea cups and saucers; interesting chocolate packaging; an odd assortment of memorabelia from the U.S. including JFK pins and a blanket of the Beatles tour; a small museum dedicated to the country of Columbia -- we thought of you Andrea and Diana; and more) housed in wildly opinionated architecture (here's the Tudor section and right down the hall you can see the Italian renaissance!)

On the third floor, we stopped in the chocolate cafe for fondue, chocolate milk in beautiful little tea cups with lids, and (for me and John), a cup of hot chocolate with Bailey's.

While we were there, the clock struck three and we watched (in awe, I must admit), as the clock tower out the window came to life and music and figures circled round and round while bubbles filled the air.

Nearby was a room filled with tiny (and EXPENSIVE) sugar creations -- babies, brides, flowers of all shapes and kinds -- that were marvelous to look at but too expensive to indulge in. I have some of them (and lots from the visit) at our Shutterfly site: jackkateliv.shutterfly.com (password: kozleski).

From there, we finished our tour and ended up by visiting the gift shop (where we sat with American presidents and the Mona Lisa and stocked up on cookies to take home).



With our White Beloved Ones in hand, we headed out to a magical world where the kids could have stayed all day... the outdoor space was filled with tiny houses, completely furnished and accessible to anyone who could squeeze in them.

They had bungalows and a lean-to and a soddie with a thatched roof, castles and lofts and even three tree houses (that were sadly not open to kids).

Illustrating yet again the humor of whoever it is who built this place, a child Jack's size could pop his head through a roof only to have a giant-sized Wack-a-mole nearly "wack" the child's head with a mallet!

It's hard to say what the kids liked more -- the perfectly-sized houses or the delicious chocolate milk they had just finished. The combination left them in a bit of a daze... and they didn't want to go (understandably!).

But we herded them out when, for some reason, other visitors started taking pictures of OUR kids in the little houses. At first it was sweet, and then kind of creepy, so we said our goodbyes and promised the kids we'd come back again. It's an easy promise to make -- we had as much fun as they did.

And the moral of the story -- if you're wondering if it's worth getting out of your house, even on cold, wintry days, it is. You might not experience quite the extreme range of strange that we did, but the world outside is almost always more interesting.