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!

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

We had an absolutely fantastic Christmas here in Fukuyama. I will be putting up pictures of our revelry as soon as I figure out how to get them off of my phone. Unfortunately, our camera, which has been taking terrible pictures from day one, is slowly becoming only able to take pictures that are not much better than a daguerrotype. A recent addition to its ineptitude is the inability to flash or focus on anything even remotely resembling a subject. The photos are usually blurry and hazy unless the subject is completely still, which I am pretty sure my children are incapable of. I have a deep and complex relationship of dislike and betrayal with this camera, which, as you can see, is turning into semi-psycotic anthropomorphising on my part. We finally gave up on the camera on Christmas Eve and opted for taking photos with the only slightly better cell phone camera. In case you are wondering why we bought such a terrible camera in the first place, we didn't. It was given to us as a replacement when our previous camera (which took decent photos) had electrical problems. Sigh.

Parliament of owls with Theo in background

Last week, Theo's kindergarten had a Christmas presentation. It was held at the Reed and Rose Arena, our city's concert hall, and included two plays and multiple songs played on the melodica. Theo and the rest of the children in the youngest kindergarten class performed a really cute but random play. The premise was as follows: All of the animals of the forest are gathered together because they have found a secret cave. A few animals enter it to explore and come out claiming to have seen great sights. They tell all of the animals to go in and see for themselves, but the foxes are too afraid to enter. It takes the rhetoric of the wise owls to persuade the foxes. After all of the animals enter the cave, they discover that it is a magical portal to the North Pole where they meet Santa, his reindeer, and elves. Santa then proceeds to take them for a ride in his sleigh and give them each a present.

Sucking on his paws

The amazing part about this play was that there was about 80 children on stage at one point. Nobody burst out crying, ran off the stage, or hurt themselves. I didn't think that it was possible to avoid at least a couple of incidents over the course of 15 minutes with that many 3-4 year olds, but somehow they pulled it off. Theo played the part of a wolf and looked incredibly bored the whole time. He spent the better part of the play looking everywhere but forward, pulling at his sleeves, and yawning. If you are wondering which one is Theo in these pictures, just look for the most distracted, glazed expression and it is bound to be him.

Studying the floor

Here is a video of the kids with Theo in front and center singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". The video was cut short by William who decided to burst into tears halfway through the song. 

Any advice on what we should get to replace our excuse of a camera?