Sunday in the Park with Toru

Pretty chill weekend. The boys each had friends over, so we had 5 kids in the house. Contrary to what you may think, this was actually calmer than having just our 2. There was a huge buffer between our kids, so no fighting to deal with. M & his New Best Friend Kumi mostly hung out with each other, and D had Jun and his little brother Min-Hyuk to play with. I laid around on the couch and Jeff made a movie from the Hokkaido footage. Pretty cool.

Sunday, we went to Mitsuike Park (which I think Jeff has finally learned how to pronounce). Since Toru lives really near there, we gave him a call and he met us there with Kyotoro. We found a nice sunny spot on a hill and drank a beer and had a combini picnic while the kids ran around and went on the rolly-slide a couple million times.































































D's strawberry sandwich to go with his strawberries











































strawberry-Pocky monster






























































This rather phallic building is on the way back home

Monday apparently went well at school. Kumi & M, tired of all the crap they were getting from the Mean Girls and of dealing with it themselves, got the teacher involved. The girls got a talking-to, and M discovered why his gf had stopped talking to him. Some incident with our friend Hannah from months ago and before their 'relationship' started. Girls. After assuring Nina that he did not in fact love Kumi (tho she is always coming over), M was forgiven. I'm not sure what their status is, however, as M is spending all his time with Kumi. I don't understand how these things work. Keeping friendship and romance separate, I guess. Lots of people do that. Not me, I married my best friend. But anyway, things seemed to have calmed down, a detente has been achieved, and M & Kumi are happily BFF. She gets along well with D, too.


































I captured the girls on the playground doing one of those hand-clapping song game things, in Japanese. Even they don't know what they're saying entirely. I have to put a link to it, as Blogger suddenly won't let me imbed video anymore.

Here are some of the year's first cherry blossoms. We had a warm spell, so it was predicted they would come early this year, but then it got cold again, so they changed the forecast back. In any case, I hope they don't bloom and disappear while we are in Singapore. Sadly, I only had my phone to take pictures with. I'll get some better ones when I have my real camera with me.


























































And here's a picture of our new car! Which is still sitting on the lot because Jeff can't take it home until he has all this paperwork done that proves he has someplace to park it. The police actually come out and measure the parking space! Good thing we were forced to accept the parking when we signed our lease.




















Tomorrow is a National Holiday of some sort, and the kids & I are going to a park that has lots of old houses in it, with Helen and Martine (a photographer friend of Helen's).

Oh, and here's more pictures from the party, courtesy of Chris.