Christmas 2014

We really love Christmas around our house and do our best to make it traditional and festive for ourselves as well as the kids. This requires a little bit more effort on our part since we live in a country where basically all Christmas amounts to is seeing really badly decorated trees, eating fried chicken and tasteless cake, and hearing Wham's "Last Christmas" played a million times.

Two years ago we bought a large artificial tree (well, large for Japanese standards since the trees here are usually only about a meter tall) and the kids "helped" set it up at the beginning of December. We spent a few days in December whipping off batches of cookies in our new oven. In previous years I had been baking cookies 6 at a time in our tiny microwave/oven combo and it took me forever to get any amount of cookies baked. It was wonderful to have 4x the baking capacity this year!

We also went to a few Christmas parties in the middle part of December which were kind of hectic but fun for the kids.

William, who I think was intending on a peace sign, at the Fukuyama Foreign Association Christmas party

Rosie checking out the little tree at our church Christmas party

Opening a present from Santa at the church Christmas party

Winter break began for the kids and I on December 22nd. Dustin's winter holidays usually only begin around the 28th, but he always takes at least Christmas day off. We spent the days before Christmas going on exploratory bike rides, going to a train show, and trying to keep warm.

Checking out Bingo Honjo station from the wrong side of the tracks

William the conductor

Playing with electric trains

An exceedingly hairy looking Dustin and a rare Fukuyama snow.

Here's my little bit of whining: I managed to feel sick on and off all winter break. All I wanted to do was curl up in bed and sleep off the headaches, congestion and coughing but a mother doesn't exactly have the luxury of being out of commission during the holidays. Instead I just went through the motions in a kind of a sickly daze and hoped that everyone was enjoying themselves more than me. Dustin was nice enough to wake up at the crack of dawn with Rosie every day so that I could get an hour or two more sleep each morning.

On Christmas Eve we brought the kids to the zoo only to find out that they were randomly closed for the day. There is an awesome playground next to the zoo so we just let the kids spend the afternoon running around there instead. Compared to some of the seriously sketchy playgrounds in our area this one is amazing.

いないないばあ!

William on a classic rolly tube slide

And Rosie watching

I am not sure if this will become a permanent family tradition for us, but for the last few years we have designated Christmas Eve as our Japanese Christmas dinner day and Christmas Day as the typical western holiday cuisine day. Last year we had nabe on Christmas Eve this year we went all out with fried chicken, pizza, and the best part of Christmas cake: strawberries. 

The children then spent the rest of the evening decorating sugar cookies for Santa and writing a letter to go with them.

Cookie decorating time

They got jealous of Santa's spread and needed their own glass of milk and cookies before going to bed

Once the kids were asleep we finished up a bit of wrapping and pulled the presents from their hiding places to go under the tree. 

 And the next morning:

William showing off the book given to him by his kindergarten.

Theo helping Rosie open up her present.

William and his walkie talkie with ecstatic Theo in the background.

 I spent the rest of the day in a sick but industrious cloud baking a turkey and pies, making stuffing mashed potatoes, and all the lovely veggies.

This was just the beginning of our holidays and I will hopefully find the time to write about the rest of it soon. I also noticed that there were no pictures of Bosco or me from Christmastime, and since this post is so picture heavy already, here is a token selfie and a cute picture of our lavender pooch soaking in some winter sunshine.

Sera Park

On Saturday, we went for a trip with some friends of ours to a park in Sera Town, which is about an hour drive north west of Fukuyama. We had never been there, or even heard of this town before, but our friends, who have become like an adoptive set of grandparents for the boys, were certain that we all would have a fun time.  The weather started off pretty dreary, with little spatters of rain, but by the time we arrived in Sera it was warm and sunny with blue skies.

It was obvious that we were much higher up in the mountains since the sakura are falling from the trees in Fukuyama and the buds hadn't even opened in Sera Park. There was a large and very creative playground area for the children to play in and quite a few acres of hilly green space.

This is a view of the playground area where the kids spent most of the morning exploring and playing:

Surrounding the playground was open recreational space. You can see that all of the cherry trees are still naked.

William making new friends and checking out all of the fun playthings

There were even three miniature ponies. You could pay 30 yen (37 cents Canadian) to feed them a dish of carrots or 100 yen (about 1.25$ Canadian) to go for a ride. I don't know much about the nutritional needs of ponies, but it seems like a steady stream of children feeding them carrots all day is a bad idea. They seemed happy enough though.

Theo spent a lot of time riding the spinning saucer. I would have loved it as a kid, but now it made me queasy just watching.

After an hour or so of playing, we all stopped to enjoy a delicious picnic that our friends made for us. There was onigiri, barbecued beef, vegetables, sausages, pickled radishes, spaghetti, potato salad and omelet rolls. It was so, so good!

After lunch, William went down for a nap so Dustin, Theodore and I went for a hike around the rest of the park. Like a true explorer, Theo's first goal was to find an appropriate walking stick which he called his "wizard's staff".

On our walk we came across a man flying a super long and colourful kite.

The surrounding mountains were extremely beautiful, especially since there was not a sign of human habitation for as far as the eye could see. 

At the top of a nearby hill, we found another, smaller playground. Theo clambered around pretending to be the Spider King and that ladybugs where invading his spider castle. I don't think he will ever be bored.

We also found a super long slide.

Eventually William woke up and we decided to head home, stopping by the Sera Winery on our way. I assumed there would just be tours of the vineyard and wine tasting, but it seems they have really put a lot of efforts into attracting tourists. There was live music, a farmers market, a miniature steam train that the children could ride, all manner of desserts flavoured like wine for sale, and of course, many different wines to try and buy. To top it all off, we arrived just in time for a mochi throwing event.

In the end it was four happy adults and two very tired and content children that piled into the car for the trip back to Fukuyama. What a fabulous way to spend a Saturday. Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Oshima!

Playgrounds for the People

I don't know if this is true for all of Japan, but our city must have a truly low budget for children's parks and playgrounds. They aren't dirty, or necessarily dangerous, but they all seem to have a certain air of decrepitude and neglect. Perhaps the idea was that neighborhoods were supposed to take on the responsibility of maintaining these spaces after they were built, but with aging populations and lives that are becoming increasingly less community centric the playgrounds are being forgotten.

The good news is that they were built, however many decades ago, to last and they certainly have. What I have seen all over our city are extremely creative, whimsically designed play structures, slides, and swings with crumbling concrete and paint so faded that you aren't sure what colour it was originally. They are usually contained within a compound of dirt or grass in dire need of attention. Dustin and I joke about the steel and concrete, functional feel of the playgrounds and wonder if Japan purposefully designed them after ones in Soviet Russia. Hey, the kids seem to love them though and that is all that really matters.

Here is a playground near downtown that the kids and I stopped at for a bit. It was clean and the gravel seemed freshly raked, but everything was in dire need of a little friendliness and creativity.

This lovely park is located between the shadowy concrete columns that hold up the shinkansen track. It is a nice place to bring the kids when it is just too hot to stay out in the sun for long. The ground is covered with a layer of fine, silty, dark dust that plasters itself to your skin and clothes and leaves you filthy. A heartless pirate swing? Why not!  

The metal tube slide seems to be a favourite in these playgrounds. They somehow create so much friction that you slowly squeak your way to the bottom. This is great for taking pictures of your kid, but not so fun if you are really wanting to slide.

Of all the old, run down parks we have visited this is by far my favourite. It has on otherworldly feel and Theo loves all the places to climb and tunnels to run in. I am not sure why there are two concrete tigers but they also seem to be a hit. It must have been amazing when it was first made, bright, shiny, and strange. I would absolutely love to have the time and money to patch and repaint this play structure. Maybe one day, once we find out how these things are organized and if we are still living in this neighbourhood, Dustin and I will take this on as a community service project.