Surving the First Week of Summer

Yup, the kids are out of school. Obviously, I survived the first week of dealing with them 24/7, and I get a break for 3 weeks. Then the Chorba-Balaban Invasion.

There was a lot of laying around and video game playing, because I knew that's what they wanted to do most. After a couple days of that, tho, we had to get out of the house before things got violent. We went swimming at Negishi base on Thursday(?), but only for an hour. The real highlight of the trip was the park right next to the base. It had all sorts of open space (read: running-around room), and we bought a ball (since lost to overzealous high-kicking) and some bubbles. The boys most enjoyed the pair of little dogs that lapped up all the attention they could give them (one of them, the male, got a little overzealous in his attentions to M, and my child learned about 'humping').
































































































At the weekend, I got a much-deserved night out at the BC, and Helen and I played a marathon whist match (I won). We also donned silly hats, because, well, they were there.















I also discovered that the sun rises REALLY FREAKIN EARLY in Japan. It was like 4:30 am when I left, but the sun had been up for awhile and it was full daylight for my taxi ride home.

I managed to wake up and not feel like sh*t, so the family went to Asukayama Koen, which we had learned about via Robin and an article she had read about it. Really cool park. You get to ride a trolley to it, and the first thing we saw was a drum troupe practicing.
































It has a great fountain, in which the kids resisted thoroughly soaking themselves for about 5 minutes.





























After they had completely soaked themselves, they discovered the rest of the park, which is kids' paradise. All sorts of cool stuff to play on.































































































































See more photos of the parks here. The fountain pics are especially fun.

When we finally decided it was time to go, we got trapped by Oji station because there was a cheap footwear place and M needed new shoes (he eats them monthly, I swear). M & D both walked out of there with the brightest, whitest, most space-age looking shoes I have ever seen AND a coupon for the arcade across the way. It was a deafening, seizure-inducing, and bizarre place. The theme of the decor was "funky," displaying the latest Japanese craze for afros.





























The kids ended up sitting like slot-machine junkies at the 'medals' game, in which you put in your fake coins and try to get more fake coins to fall off the sliding thing and into your tray so you can keep putting more fake coins in. For HOURS.

When we finally got back to Namamugi station over an hour later, everyone was really hungry and excited to eat at the new Freshness Burger that opened this weekend. Sadly, they hadn't anticipated the crowds and were sold out of everything, so we left, disappointed, for the boring ol' supaa. Jeff made some yummy beef n onions, tho, so it worked out OK.

This week I will be obsessively planning for my trip next week, because I will be all by myself and will have no Japanese-speaking (or English-speaking, as far as that goes) crutch to lean on.

I leave you with some advice I got from a T-shirt by the cheap footwear place.