Back Home

Has anyone been wondering if we fell off the face of the earth in the past month and a half? We did, sort of, but we are finally back in Fukuyama. We actually had been in Canada visiting family from the middle of July to the end of August.

It feels great to be back home, but we are still waiting for the internet to be hooked up in our house. They actually won't be coming to set it up until the end of September. I absolutely don't understand why it is taking them four months to do this. We don't have much choice, so mostly I have been silently gnashing my teeth and fuming about being inconvenienced and cut off from the world. Only three more weeks to go!

Here are we are last month, waiting for the bus to take us to the airport in Hiroshima City.

We left in the morning with lots of energy and hoping that the kids maintained their good mood for most of the 27 hours that it would take to get to Winnipeg. 

The trip ended up being extremely uneventful which is the best you can hope for. No children or minds were lost along the way.

Auto and Clock Museum

Here is something I should have written about long ago, but it's better late than never. In the end of February, we went to the Fukuyama Auto and Clock museum which is extremely close to our apartment. We bike past it at least once a week and finally decided to stop and take a peek inside.

One of three large rooms stuffed with awesome junk

It turned out to be a fantastic collection of odds and ends which provided a fun afternoon for the whole family. I got the feeling that the museum was started by a highly organized hoarder who decided to justify his obsessions by charging people admission to poke through his assorted junk. There was a collection of player pianos, street organs, rice cookers from the turn of the century to present, dozens and dozens of rocking horses, sombreros, old fashioned toys, WWII memorabilia, wax work figures, old painted squat toilets, old airplanes, and of course a large assortment of automobiles and clocks. 

The best part about it all was that they allowed and encouraged the kids to touch, climb, play, and get into everything. Who am I kidding? I had just as much fun running around exploring. Being surrounded by all that history really made me get a sense of what it would have been like to live in Japan 50 or more years ago. It was a really neat time warp-like sensation.

Trying out the old motorcycle fire engine

 It was surprising to me that a car which looked so tiny from the outside provided more than enough head and leg room.

 Super creepy wax figures of very random famous people.

Giving Theo a ride on a rickshaw

Me and my buddy James Dean

Getting a ride in the '50s  three wheeled motorcycle taxi. 

Speedy Gonzales

I am so glad that the days of the two of them driving around together and getting up to no good are far, far in the distance.

For now, they are happier going for these kinds of rides:

We all had an amazing time at the museum and highly recommend it to anyone traveling in Fukuyama, especially with kids.