The big day....

We had a video chat with my mom first thing and Ebi-kun opened some of his presents, he kept some for when daddy got home (he has been away on business all week). Then after I asked Ebi-kun if he wanted to go to the modern art museum or the National Train Museum, the train museum won, which wasn't much of a surprise since we haven't been for a long time.

They have added some new parts to the museum and changed it around a bit. As Japanese museums go this one is really good, there is a lot of hands on stuff to do and the kids are allowed to get on many of the trains. They also have train simulations, Ebi-kun had a go at being a shinkansen driver (bullet train). It wasn't that busy at the museum but we still had to queue for about 30 minutes to go on this.

OK, random picture number one, you know the Japanese are famous for sleeping anywhere, well these were 'rest seats' not even in the train and yes, everyone was asleep, just cracked me up!

This is one of the new additions, outdoor play area, all the equipment is shinkansen shaped, although the day started rainy it had stopped by the afternoon.

 If you are looking for a good place to wear the kids out (or mothers in this case!) it is a great place to go, climbing in and out of all the trains is hard work! Before they had a couple of carriages inside where you could eat your lunch, you can buy an eki-ben to eat. Eki means station and ben is short for bento so eki-ben is a speciality station bento, many stations have the local speciality food in their eki-ben, for my husband it is one of the treat of going long distance by train. Anyway, now the eating carriages are outside, next to the real train tracks so you see the local trains go past as you eat - very exciting if you are a train spotter or small boy! Inside they have a steam train on a turntable and twice a day it goes round and they blow the whistle, the kids love it!

 I was quite taken with the stained glass windows....

 and this is the original artwork, taken at a funny angle because I was trying to avoid the glare.

 Random picture number two... for lonely train drivers?

Another new addition was the science room where you could try your hand at all kinds of experiments, took me back to my physics lessons at school.

After spending most of the day at the museum I asked Ebi-kun where he wanted to go for dinner and he opted for the purple cafe, as we used to call it but it has had a make-over and is now the cream cafe.  This was a favourite haunt of Kate and mine when she was living over here, we used to meet up when Ebi-kun was a baby, plonk him down on the sofa and have a good natter, I am glad he picked here for dinner! happy memories.

We had spaghetti for the main course then he picked mont blanc (sweet chestnut) cake for dessert. Lovely way to end the day. Daddy made it back in the wee hours so we will be having birthday mark II today!

and then he was ....

✵✻✥✲✰✫ SIX ✫✰✲✥❋✵

Blimey, how did that happen? It only feels like last week when we at the hospital, you were tiny and had such scrawny skinny chicken legs! We had a bumpy start, not that you would know it now, (don't click through if you are about to have a baby!). Now, you are strong minded, caring, fair, creative, intelligent and have a very cheeky sense of humour. Sometimes you drive me crazy with your non stop chatter and endless stream of questions but really, I wouldn't have you any other way.

a few hours old

aged one

aged two

aged three

aged four

aged five

aged six

✪ Happy 6th Birthday Ebi-kun! ✪

2:46

A weekly round up of event after the quake.

Not very much to share with you this week, I came across ganbatte365 which is a new project aiming to document  renewal in the aftermath of the quake by sharing stories.

A FB friend posted the link to this video, it  does not paint the Japanese government in a good light, it is disgusting that the victims of the nuclear reactor are being treated in such a way. It seems that they are victims in more than one way and they are not getting support financially and otherwise because they are not victims of a natural disaster - like the tsunami and earthquake victims. Many of the people Yasuyo is working with in Germany are in this situation, they don't live close enough to the reactor to get a 'pass' from the government and they were not affected by the actual quake but where they live is not where they want to be with their children due to the radiation, so very sad.

I like to ride my....

bicycle!

Yes, Ebi-kun has finally mastered the skill of riding a bike, took several crashes into the neighbours walls and a couple of close calls with the neighbours cars but he can go in a sort of straight line now.

He hasn't mastered the art of corners just yet, won't be long, I'm sure. The boost he needed to get to grips with it all was that if he mastered it this week, before Friday in fact, he will be able to say he learnt to ride a bike when he was 5 not 6!

 And this is what happens when I ask him to hold the camera for a second! 

Just call me the ninja star maker....

I have been busy (whilst watching my favourite dramas I might add) making shuriken or ninja stars fro Ebi-kuns picnic on Sunday. I am not that good when it comes to origami and I still can't  make one of those origami cranes, but I can knock out shuriken quicker than you can say ninja star maker, well nearly. Let's face it ninja stars score more 'cool mom' points than a crane, anyone (bar me) can make a crane!

Return to the wild...

When we went camping we caught some little fish and a couple of tadpoles. Sadly all the fish went belly up on Monday but the tadpoles were OK. When we caught them one of the tadpoles had just started to grow legs the only was was all tadpole, by yesterday, the bigger one had turned virtually into a frog, he has a tiny tail left. We were worried that he needed froggy food, which I do not have and I am not going out catching live bugs to feed a frog! So we decided to set them both free, we went up the road to the rice paddies and released them there, I am sure the local farmer will be very 'happy' with us! So, adios Taddy and Jack, it has been a pleasure watching you grow up....

If you are looking for a nice book Ebi-kun really likes this one, From Tadpole To Frog

the sweet voice of Ebi-kun...

Could be heard singing to himself the other day...

'How big is your glutemus max-i-mus?

Oh, how big is your glutemus max-i-mus?'

It was a jolly little tune, not sure about the words though!

not such a lazy day...

After Sundays exciting day we decided that yesterday we would have a nice quiet lazy day, didn't turn out that way. After the usual morning jobs I needed to go to the post office and supermarket, Ebi-kun was really tired and pretty horrible so I managed to convince him to have an nap after lunch. I got some computer work done whilst he was sleeping and then if was all hands on deck... firstly, after lunch all the fish went belly up so we had to clean out the tank especially since the tadpoles were still alive. One is almost a frog, I am surprised how quickly he has grown, still not sure why all the fish died so suddenly, all within 2 hours, very odd.

Then we finished off the pinata for the picnic, we filled it with little ninja balls....

After that is was a mad rush round to get pizza made and the house looking something like because we had friends coming round. We haven't seen them for such a long time, they returned to Canada just after the earthquake and they have just came back to pack up the house as they have decided to return permanently to Canada. They were due to return next year anyway so they have just bought it forward a bit. The kids enjoyed playing upstairs and we enjoyed catching up. It is funny how everything is considered as pre-quake or after-quake these days. It was lovely to see them all and they will be sorely missed when they go, E-chan (the middle one) was just two when they first arrived here and R-chan wasn't even a twinkle in her daddy's eye! How they have grown.

A Surprise day Out....

It is Ebi-kun's birthday at the end of this week but Daddy-ebi might be away on business for his actual birthday and we have organised a picnic in the park but the weather is all over the place at the moment so we were a bit worried that one way or another his birthday would be a bit of a flop. So, we came up with a cunning plan, we called Ebi-kuns best friend from yochien, S-kun and arranged to pick him up in the morning, then we took them to Round 1 for bowling. S-kuns mom doesn't speak English and so it is really hard for me to arrange play dates and the such so this is the first time they have been out together, just the two of them, they were SO excited.

Ebi-kun and S-Kun

He looks  like he knows what he is doing in this shot!

they have rails for the kids so the ball doesn't go in the gutter

S-kun, who could only just lift the ball!

doing the funky chicken?

we got free goes in the UFO catcher, but won nothing

After bowling we went to the sports area, you pay a fee to get in then everything is free, it is massive inside, roller rink, real fishing, football,, tennis, badminton, archery, batting, putting golf, shooting, video games, billiards, rodeo, basketball shooting, darts, boxing, mini bowling, curling and I am sure I have missed some and there is a large kids section which was great. 

ball shooting room with lots of cannons, vacuum suckers and ball blasters great fun!

this thing went up and down, the things behind spin round and are all padded

this is like a giant padded hamster wheel

There was also a big jungle gyms, slides, tricycle racing, kids karaoke and ballon pit. We had 90 minutes of loonie fun, we decided not to eat there because the food just didn't look very nice, typical junk food, so we came home for a late lunch.

 I made a banoffi pie (but I couldn't get it out of the mold!

Then we sent the boys to play upstairs, spinning each other around in the chair seemed to be a favourite game.

If this isn't the face of an over excited little boy, I don't know what is!

We took S-kun home and they had a little play in the park opposite S-kuns house whilst we exchanged arigato's and sumimasen's with his parents. 

It was a lot of fun and today I am paying for it, a certainly little boy is very tired and grumpy, I am going to try and talk him into having a nap after lunch because we have some friends dropping by later, normally I would ask them to re-schedule but they are leaving Japan soon and are super busy so I don't want to miss the chance to see them before they go. Tomorrow is a holiday, Ebi-kun can catch up with his sleep then!

Catapult tutorial...

We are taking Ebi-kun and his best mate bowling today, neither of them know! What fun!

I originally wrote this for Homespun Threads Summer Soiree but thought some of you might have missed it so I have put it up here too. There are lots of  great ideas over on Homespun Threads if you are looking for things to do with the kids during the summer break.

We found this catapult idea in a Japanese craft book for kids, it's easy to make and lots of fun.

What you will need:

3 pairs of disposable chopsticks

decorative tape

plastic lid from a bottle of pop

elastic bands

5 paper cups

stapler

strong double sided tape / glue

pen

1. Start by decorating two sets of chopsticks by wrapping tape around them.

2. Break the third set of chopsticks in half, I did it by hand but you may want to saw it, cover the rough edge with tape then decorate as before.

3. Take the two long chopsticks and place them flat sides together, secure them at the narrow end with an elastic band, roughly 2.5cm / 1" from the end, don't wrap the band too tightly. Now slide the broken chopstick between the two long ones until it is about 5cm / 2" from the narrow end. Secure with another elastic band, if your bands are not very big you may need to use two.

4. Attach the pop cap to the other end of the top chopstick with either strong double sided tape or glue, leave 0.5cm / 1/4" from the very end.

5. Prepare you missiles, rolled up pieces of tin foil work well as do power balls, nothing too heavy.

6. Now for the target. Take the 5 paper cups and place them together in a circle then staple each one to the cup next to it. 

7. If you want to make the game more challenging, write some scores in the bottom of the cups.

8. Get ready to play. Put the missile in the pop lid, in this case the brave King Arthur, with one hand hold the short cross section of chopsticks and with the other push the top chopstick down, Aim and.....

FIRE!

Experience tells us that those Lego Kings are mighty talented in aerial displays!

The missiles tend to fly quite high so don't use anything that might take your eye out! 

Ebi-kun had just as much fun trying out the types of missile as he did trying to get them in the cups.

Ice-cream bag...

I can't believe I forgot to show you my new bag! Using the rest of the ice-cream flowers fabric that I had and some round plastic handles I made a cute little summer bag. I had a pattern in one of my Japanese books on how to make the bag, I sat for about an hour just looking at the book trying to figure out what they were doing, usually I can figure it out with the little Japanese I know and the illustrations but this one had me foxed. So I chucked the book to one side and just did it my own way. Turned out just right, I even broke into the ribbon stash and used some really pretty pink scalloped velvet ribbon as a finishing touch. (the ribbon was from paper-and-string)

I forgot to take a photo of the inside but it is lined with the big green polka dots fabric and it reversible if I ever get sick of ice-cream, which, let's face it, is unlikely!

If you would like any of the summer lovin' fabric it is available here.