What a Weekend

So many little things have been happening since Mike's Big Mt. Fuji climb. I suppose as the weekend approached, more opportunities came into focus. On Friday, I was invited to go to Mother Farm Amusement Park in Chiba. A fellow mother, Janelle, thought of the brilliant idea of chartering a bus to take us all. Chiba is about a 2 hour bus ride depending on traffic. Unfortunately there are no trains that stop right near the farm, which could leave driving as a good option, except that we are all mothers of babies and toddlers. Caravanning would just be impractical. (Picture commuting, then having to pull over to feed your crying baby for 30 minutes..... OK, now multiply that by 10. In addition, we wouldn't know where the heck we were going for sure. We would never get there.) The bus was great. We could throw our strollers beneath and there was a DVD player for movies. We'd be able to attend to our kidlets needs without risking a potential accident on the Yoko-Yoko.

Once we were at Mother Farm they were ready for us. A very nice employee was sent out to give us maps in English. The weather was very hot and humid, but we slathered the babes (and us) up in sunblock and headed out to milk some cows. Josh was a little intimidated by the whole process. I, on the other hand, was all for it. I had never milked a cow before, so this was some good experience. It surprised me just how firmly you had to actually squeeze to get some milk out. Along with cows, they had horses, bunnies, geese, dogs, sheep, goats, and the very popular Japanese stray cats! Every restaurant served fresh homemade pudding, yogurt, ice cream & milk. Also, at the gift shops they served cheesecake, candy, chocolate & truffles.

This weekend started off pretty tame until I had the very bright idea (can you sense the sarcasm?) to drive up to the five story 100 yen shop in Tokyo. After all, we hadn't gotten much drive time in. We've taken the trains practically everywhere. The most that we've driven is around our little penisula near Yokosuka and one time up to the Negishi Base Housing. The expressways were fine until we hit a little traffic. Nothing too crazy though - pretty similar to L.A. traffic. Once we got off the expressway is when the real fun started. Mike was hit with a rash of road rage and I hit the hazards and switched seats so I could drive for a while. We ended up circling the place several times looking for the 100 yen store until we finally decided to just park and walk to try and find it. After all, we knew that it was close to the Tokyu Hands store. So, we parked in the parking garage closest to Tokyu Hands. After looking a while for Daiso (the 100 yen store), Mike decided that it was probably written out in Japanese, and sure enough he found it in Katakana. Sheesh, the directions from base stunk..... could they have at least told us it would be written in Katakana?! All of the other landmarks they had listed on the directions in English letters had been in English, so we thought for sure that the Daiso would be in English also. This is when Mike's knowledge for Katakana came in handy. After much frustration we found it. We had a great time. I found some discontinued Sanrio characters that my sister loves, so I got some for her. We also found some practical things like rain ponchos and a sunshade for the car. There were lots of gaijin there looking for a bargain. After 5 stories of shopping for 100 yen items, we were exhausted and hungry. We ended up eating at a Ramen shop and heading home. Needless to say I cracked open a Chu-Hi and Mike cracked open a Kirin when we got home!

Sunday started out pretty mellow, too. In the evening it livened up though. One of our fellow neighbors, Patrice, told us about a summer Bon Odori (street festival) going on in our neighborhood at a local park. Once Josh got up from his nap, we decided to walk on down to the celebration. There were vendors selling all kinds of the Japanese staples, Octopus balls, Yakitori, chocolate covered bananas & Hawaiian ice. Because it was the second day of the festivities, things were a little less crowded which made it great for the kids to run around. All the boys had inflatable swords and were smacking the ground and each other. About a few minutes after our arrival, they started doing a dance that I think is called the Obon Dance? It reminded me a bit of a Japanese Kanga line, with a drummer drumming a beat and everyone encircling the stage. The drummer and dancers continued doing this repetitive dance for a long time. Anyone was allowed to jump in and dance at any time. Most of the dancers were people we recognized from the neighborhood. After the obon dance, some young hula girls did several dances as well and were followed up by older hula dancing women. After chit chatting with some of our neighbors and watching the dances, it was time to go home. After attending this neighborhood festival, it really helped us feel more at home here in the Land of the Rising Sun.

The pictures in this post are all from the Bon Odori Festival, except the top one of Nicki and Josh milking the cow, which was from Mother Farm (thanks, Gretchen!). The rest of them are posted in the Gallery, dated 07/17/2006. Mike apologizes for his self-described "limited abilities to shoot pictures at night", because some of the pictures contain motion blur and grainyness.