Elderly Festival at School

Max's class participated in an elderly festival for neighborhood people today. He played songs with his Grade 4/5 band. This obaachan smiled through the whole thing!

The band's first song was "Smoke on the Water." Second, "Let it Be." Very nice playing, Max!

Click here to hear "Smoke on the Water."

The show also featured a choir, a demonstration of how to exercise at home, and a local school's Grade 3 dance.

Afterwards, there was food, and a couple of activities for the children.

One of the games was called, "Torture your parents." ("Can I keep it, Mom? Please? He says we can each take home five of them!"). This is the reason we now have three black goldfish in a 1 liter bottle on our kitchen.

In this activity, children as young as 6 were handed real saws, hammers, and nails and invited to create tables, boxes, and other stuff. Be still, Aunt Lisa and Grandma.

This sort of reminds me of the famous stand at Newark Community Days, where a man dumps a truckload of wood scraps on a tarp and kids create stuff. Except that that activity involves wood glue (which does not dry before you get home) and zero sharp objects. The kids here were remarkably good at sawing and nailing. Max got a blister from the saw, but otherwise, no boo boos.

Alek made a great little table. So did Max. Some other kid we know bent his first nail, and ran away from the scene.

Thought you would enjoy this.

This pizza has the following four toppings:

Lobster gratin

Foie Gras and roast chicken

Beef and fresh mozzarella

Something with tomato sauce

A large size costs Y3950.

Two constants in our lives

In the midst of daily challenges, it is a comfort to know we can always count on two things.

1. Laundry. We hang stuff out every day unless it is raining (and even in the rain--there is a roof over the poles). Now that it's colder, the clothes are larger (!) so if we have two days of laundry, it's a tight fit in our little washer. When I was packing, I did not realize that I'd only need three pairs of pants for each boy. One on their bodies, and two on the line.

This image is taken of our clothes hanging out at night. It may be foreign, but I see nothing wrong with hanging it out the night before!

2. Dust. These two images are taken literally 3 days after Darrin vacuumed the entire house for an hour:

Five people in four rooms? Check. Constant movement of bedding, in and out of the closet? Check. No dryer to collect all that lint? Check.

Excuse me, I have to go vacuum and hang out the laundry....

Manga Maniacs Marauding while Mommy Mingles

guest post by Darrin

Little dudes with plenty of vacation days, but adults with a different situation. So, boys' day out.

Headed to the Kyoto International Manga Museum, a mere 10 blocks(ish) south on Karasuma from our house.

And a mere 100 Yen/kid to get in!

People spend entire careers studying manga and manga history. In short, Japanese comics. This place had a L-O-T.

Decades of Manga, mostly in Japanese but also in pretty much every other major language in the world. Fun reading rooms in which to dive in and make yourself at home (after taking off your shoes, of course).

The quite cool building was a public school from 1867 (!) till 1995. This guy was the first principle. I don't think he put up with much jive from the students.

Cute class pic-just like Avon Grove.

A certain Tezuka Osamu was discussed much in the museum-one of the more influential manga artists of the 20th century. One of his prevalent characters was Hi No Tori (the Phoenix). This bird is now immortalized in a very large way on the wall of the museum.

One thing I did learn was something that cleared up a personally held misconception since my Speed Racer Days. Don't know about you, but I've always thought, "Man, that Japanese animation kind of stinks." Kind of choppy, repeated backgrounds, unnatural facial expressions/speaaking, etc. Well, genius. It's on purpose!

Turns out, much of Japanese animation is created with manga in mind. That is, the animated film is meant to capture the spirit of static manga with repeated backgrounds, images repeated many times in sequence, etc in order to give the audience a feel of reading a manga book. "Real-time"animation can have up to 24 frames/sec. Manga has, at most, 8, with many of those frames repeats of the same image.

I feel more complete now.

A couple more mags before hitting the road.

And on the way out, why not have a race on the full-length astroturf field that is the front yard of the museum. Beats having a parking lot.

("Yes, we can stop at a vending machine on the way home.")

Lake Biwa Museum

The boys were out of school from Monday through Wednesday. On Tuesday, we took two trains and a bus to the Lake Biwa Museum. It was a beautiful place. And one thing about our boys, is they sure do get their money out of their museum experiences. This one happened to be free for kids, but still. They really never get tired of finding new things to see at any museum.

There was a large freshwater aquarium.

This is a perch! It was about 20 pounds....

The crawfish did not like this one bit.

Outside the museum you could see the South end of Lake Biwa. That's Alek in front of Mt. Hiei. Kyoto is on the other side of that mountain... Sometime soon, we would like to go up there. You can hike or take a cable car.

Practicing with the microscopes. This lake was formed over 200,000 years ago. That is, half of 200,000 years ago. (For some reason, Ms. Smackbook is not typing a one anymore. She types an exclamation point. But not a one. Just when I thought we were getting to be friends, she pulls a move on me.) Anyway, because of its age, this lake is of great biological interest.

At the mockup of a research station, they had these boots outside and slippers for going inside. I find this so charming....

Here's a scene from the exhibit about the people around the Lake.

This country house was made in the !890's. It was lived in until !993 and then somebody donated it to the museum. It is set up as if it were !960. Dubbed Donna Reed is on the TV. I loved looking at this house.

Here is the outdoor bathtub. Basically a big barrel with a lid, with a place for a fire underneath. I guess you climb in the door, and sit in the dark (?) so that the water stays as warm as possible.

There was a message about the environmental impact on Lake Biwa. Here's the crap that goes down the toilet and heads toward the lake.

Alek just asked me, "Is crap a bad word?"

Children's discovery area.
Bus ride back to the station.

This place was in the 'burbs! Parking lots. Rice fields. Driving range.

Yet another fun day in Japan....

Boy vs. Noodle

No contest.

Jack O Lantern

We are busily tallying the votes for the scariest picture. We will keep you posted! I am using Excel. Still time to vote.

Meanwhile, here is the extent of our Halloween decorations. We really wanted to scare the foot traffic on our street on Sunday night. But the pouring rain kept people away. Those who did look our way got to enjoy this:

Here's the pumpkin that Grade 1 designed. Alek won the right to bring it home. One side, scary.

On the other side is "he no he no mo he ji", which is a face made out of hiragana! Love this.

And then our friend from home with light-up eyes!

Boo! I hope you all had a fabulous Halloween back home.