Tag Archive for 'hon-atsugi'

Parks Weekend

Published on November 14, 2010 in Family, Japan and weekend. 0 Comments Tags: asthma, brown bench, Ebina, hon-atsugi, Hospital, Layla, park, Tamie, yurina.

Saturday we had to visit Layla’s doctor to ensure she is going to survive her latest onset of coughing/barking like a seal. She is. We got the latest round of medicines, in powder AND liquid form.

After the hospital, we found ourselves with nothing to do and thought of lunch. On the way to check out a couple new restaurants that were opening soon, we walked by a small park with one slide and one set of see-saws. Layla, of course, wanted to check it out and we, of course, obliged. Some playing ensued, much to everyone’s enjoyment, until Layla finally declared she was done.

We found that the soon-to-be-opened restaurants weren’t yet opened, so we walked around and ended up at a new, small restaurant to have lunch. We ate a quick lunch before heading off to Starbucks to meet Yurina, a friend we hadn’t seen in a long time. Layla didn’t remember her but wasn’t as shy as normal, which was a pleasant surprise. I think it had to do with the familiar setting of Starbucks, plus the fact we picked up some stickers to distract her. It worked.

That night, Tamie made pizza for supper and we (I) feasted. A good way to end a good day.

Sunday, I woke to an email request to get some pictures of Layla on a particular bench at the Ebina park. So I dragged the kid, kicking and screaming, to the park just to appease her grandparents. Kidding, of course. The mere mention of the word park brings visions of biking, sliding and running to Layla’s mind… it brings visions of gasping, wheezing and sweating while trying to keep pace with Layla to mine.

When we got to the park, Layla posed happily on the bench, even smiling for a picture or two. The weather wasn’t the greatest, but the upside of that is there weren’t as many kids around when we were actually playing on the slides and things. At one point, she said she needed ice cream. We made a deal, one she happily accepted – more pictures for an ice cream.

After posing, sliding, running and falling repeatedly, Layla was satiated. She saw the steam come on and kids crowding in it so had to join them. It wasn’t until today that she realized standing in steam, you get a bit wet. It also wasn’t until today that she realized that wet shoes leave footprints on dry cement… after the steam turned off, Layla finished by saying she wanted to go home to change her clothes. Smart kid.

The rest of our day was spent in Hon-Atsugi, where Tamie had a dentist appointment. We met up after the appointment and had an early dinner before coming home and chilling for the rest of the night at home.

Pictures from Saturday
Gallery

Pictures from Sunday

Shrine Time

Published on November 7, 2010 in Family, Japan, Parenting and weekend. 0 Comments Tags: baba, bicycle, bike, hiratsuka, hon-atsugi, isehara, Japan, jiji, Layla, park, shichigosan, shrine, Tamie, teppanyaki.

This weekend we went to a shrine in Hiratsuka to finish off Layla’s Shichi-go-san celebrations, at least for this year. She’ll do it all over again when she’s 7.

Luckily, this time there were no hospital visits, no appointments to miss or schedules to fall behind on, so this day went much smoother than the previous photographer outing. We got to the shrine in the early afternoon, signed up for our blessing, paid our blessing fee, and waited for our turn.

While we waited, we were shown to a waiting room where there were markers to write on the wishing wood they gave us. Tamie wrote something deep and meaningful in Japanese and Layla signed her name in every colour of the rainbow. Then Tamie realized she wrote on the wrong block of wood and they did it all over again on the correct one.

After some time, a shrine lady collected us and led us to the main prayer room. We sat quietly, bowing our heads when told to, as a couple of monks prayed, sang and blessed the whole occasion. I wasn’t sure if we were allowed to take any pictures, so left my camera in my bag, but the constant flashes from the tourist crowd behind us made me wonder if it’d been okay. At the very least, the tourists could have asked us if we wanted a copy of the pictures they took.

All the while the prayers and things were going on, Layla was sitting on my lap. She bowed when instructed, and listened when told. Not a tear was shed or peep peeped as she went through the whole process of celebrating her turning three. Even when she needed to go up to the front with me and place the ceremonial tree branch on the ceremonial table and ring the ceremonial bell after doing the ceremonial bow, bow, clap, clap, bow post-prayer procedures. The only time she balked at something during the day was when they offered her a bit of sake at the end. Smart kid.

Once everything was said and done, we took the opportunity to shoot a few pictures in front of the shrine before heading back home. On the way back, Layla wanted to change into her running shoes that I happened to have in my backpack. By the time she got to the car, she wanted out of the dress and into some jeans, again in the backpack.

Back at the Grandparents’ house, Layla wanted to go to her favourite park on her favourite red bicycle. Jiji was more than happy to go and I ended up tagging along, taking pictures along the way. Layla had a blast, but I wouldn’t doubt if her Jiji had more. Biking, sliding, running, playing, swinging! No wonder she likes going to the park with him!

When Layla was done with the park, we headed back home to go for dinner with everyone. There’s a great teppanyaki place that opened up in Hon-Atsugi that Tamie was interested in trying. I convinced her parents to come with us, which amounted to nothing more than asking them. I think it was unanimous that the food was great.

For the full picture gallery, click here.

Long Weekend, Short Week

Published on September 20, 2010 in Family, Japan and weekend. 0 Comments Tags: Driving, Festival, Food, hon-atsugi, Layla, long weekend, shopping, Tamie, train, yakiniku, yakisoba.

This weekend was a long weekend, due to today being “Respect for the Aged Day”. Not sure why it’s an actual holiday, but I’ll take it. Thursday this week is also a holiday (Autumn equinox) making this week a pretty short week. Gotta love it when that happens!

This weekend wasn’t especially busy, but we did manage to get out to do a couple things. Saturday we went shopping, looking for a new mattress for Layla for her new big bed. Tamie got it in her head that she wanted bunk beds in preparation of number 2, assuming we could just put the two kids together in one room from the get-go. I thought it best to wait until the second was old enough to sleep through the night before we considered that… Layla, however, loved the idea. Luckily, this time, I won out. We got a single mattress for her (although, I’m sure it fits into the bunk bed frame if need be)

That night Tamie wanted to have some meat for supper and who was I to argue? Barbecued beef sounds good to me anytime. We tried a local yakiniku shop, which from the outside looked like a hole, but inside turned out to be pretty decent. The old lady owner really took a shine to Layla, equally impressed that she spoke Japanese and was very polite. I knew she spoke Japanese, but I’m always impressed with how polite our kid is. I guess she gets that from Tamie.

Sunday we headed down to Hon Atsugi for what I thought was a small food festival, celebrating different foods from all across Japan. I think all of Tokyo showed up for it, as there were only about two million people milling about. Lineups ranged anywhere from 45 minutes to up to two hours! People were waiting 2 hours for 400 yen yakisoba, a food you can get at any festival in Japan. Thankfully, Tamie thought better of lining up and instead we bought some at the grocery store and she made it at home. Personally, I think her yakisoba is much better than the festival variety… and even if this particular festival’s yakisoba was supposed to be the best in all of Japan, I still think hers is better because I didn’t have to die in a two hour line to get it!

Layla, too, was anxious to have some food at the festival. When she hears the word festival now she associates it with the flavoured shaved ice she gets when we go. She was looking forward to it so much that she even agreed to walk all the way to get it, fighting the urge to ask me to carry her. And much to her credit, she did walk. Through two different festival sites. Only to find that there was no shaved ice booth. D’oh! We ended up at a cafe that sold the stuff, only at a 600% markup, but they added some frozen strawberries and a scoop of ice cream for the trouble. It was actually pretty good, and the price of admission paid for the air conditioning we enjoyed. After leaving the cafe, we found a booth selling the festival variety shaved ice, but by then Layla was satiated. And we were broke.

Today was the final day of our extended weekend and we didn’t really have any plans. Tamie had a dentist appointment at 10 and we were going to meet after that. She called me at 10:10 and said she was finished. Layla and I had just finished eating breakfast and were nowhere near ready to head out to meet her so she came back home. We ended up spending the day spoiling Layla (as opposed to every other weekend, eh?). We took her to the indoor kids’ fantasy land, the park for kids where most parents zone out in massage chairs, sit at slot machines or just read a book while their kids go wild. She loved it. After that, we went for lunch and she took her Mom on a train ride around the shopping centre. Finally, we ended up at an outdoor concert that broke out, as they often do, at the same shopping centre.

That’s about it. Check the gallery for more pics. Sorry for blurry, dark, or overexposed pictures. I’m still practicing with my new camera and I’m too lazy to filter out the bad pictures.

Saturday
Sunday Sunday
Monday Monday

Long Week, Short Weekend

Published on October 25, 2009 in Family, Hospital, Japan and weekend. 2 Comments Tags: hon-atsugi, Hospital, science museum, shabu shabu, shopping, Starbucks, weekend.

After a week of long working days and longer working nights, I was happy to have the weekend upon us. But alas, when the going gets tough, it just gets tougher.

Friday morning, Layla had enough of a fever that the daycare wasn’t willing to take her (38 degrees! oh my!) Swine flu running rampant in our little town, and reports all over the news again caused great concern in Tamie and her parents, enough to take Layla to the hospital. The doctor, after poking and prodding, concluded that she was undetermined to have the flu (of any kind) and we’d have to come back on Saturday. At 9am. So much for sleeping in.

9am rolled around and we were scrambling to get to the hospital on time. Arriving just after 9:07, I was happy to see that there weren’t a million parents with kids in masks. Who ever thought one would be relieved to be only the thirteenth in line at a hospital. We were actually taken care of pretty quickly, and it was determined again that Layla might not have the flu. The fact that her fever had broken wasn’t a good indication as it might come back.

A clean(ish) bill of health in hand, we set out to have a good weekend. So what did we do? The weather was miserable so we didn’t do much. We shopped, we played, we ate, we came home.

Shopping was interesting in that we picked Layla up another toilet. She’s deathly afraid of the big blue (in our house) water closet, and even when we put the friendly bunny Miffy on the toilet seat, she’s still paralyzed. The daycare, from what I understand, are doing their best to toilet train her and have a pot with anpanman, a Japanese cartoon character, encouraging the kids to do their business. I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a similar pot at home, hopefully making her comfortable enough to want to use a toilet. So far? She’s had a lot of fun pushing the buttons that play music… not so much on actually using it.

Playing involved going to the kids’ floor in the department store and letting Layla run around and play with other kids. There’s a sample toy train track out that all kids seem to love, Layla being just one of them. She wasn’t too happy when her favourite toy train (Thomas the Tank Engine, for those keeping score) was being used by another little girl. The little girl was busy playing with two trains, and despite my telling her to wait her turn, Layla insisted on trying to get one. I, using all my cunning (and most of my Japanese skills), convinced the little girl to swap one of her trains for a caboose. Layla still wasn’t happy and tried to take the girl’s other train. She really wasn’t happy when I removed her from the toy section… screaming all the way. Fun times, indeed.

Eating was the highlight of the day. We had shabu shabu, which is lots of beef in a hot pot. Not unlike the previous two weeks of sukiyaki, shabu shabu involves thinly sliced pieces of beef that we cook ourselves in one of many kinds of broth, then dunk in sauce and eat. A new place opened up in our neighbourhood a couple weeks ago and Tamie finally didn’t refuse (at least not strongly enough) to going. It was decent, but we’ve definitely had better.

Sunday was another rainy, miserable day. Tamie had a dentist appointment in the morning, so Layla and I hung out at home before heading out to meet her in Hon-Atsugi when she finished. I was eager to hit up the Burger King there because they were offering a SEVEN patty hamburger, in honour of Microsoft releasing Windows 7. Thankfully, they were sold out when we got there so we went for lunch at a more reasonable, less beefy place.

Before lunch, we headed to the science museum to open Layla’s mind to the wonders and amazements that science has to offer. She seemed to have a good time, playing with marbles and … well, mostly marbles. I was most interested in the hand sanitizer they had available at the exit with the big sign outlining the dangers of influenza. Pandemic, much?

After lunch, we came back to Ebina and ventured back up to the kids’ floor of the department store to give Layla another opportunity to throw a tantrum… unfortunately, they were having some kind of halloween party so there were a thousand kids, all hopped up on sugar and adrenaline… I say unfortunately, not because I didn’t want Layla to get involved, rather she was too timid to go out and play. The chaos of it all seemed to wilt her spirits so we instead helped Tamie shop for a new jogging shirt that she used after we got back home.

Maybe not the most exciting weekend, but it had its moments.

Pictures are available here:
Saturday
Sunday

Big crowds, bigger fireworks!

Published on August 9, 2009 in Family, Japan and weekend. 0 Comments Tags: 2009, fireworks, hon-atsugi, matsuri, summer festival.

Today was just like any other Saturday – we tried to sleep in only to be woken up by the kid who never wakes up early on a weekday. Ah well, sleep is overrated anyways. With an early start, we had the whole day in front of us! So what would we do? … yep, it was another Saturday – like any other Saturday we had no idea what to do. When Tamie asked me the night before I told her I didn’t want to do anything – I was too tired and I think getting sick to boot. The shining sun outside and the bouncing Layla underfoot made going back to bed impossible… so we did what anyone would do – we called my parents.

Layla is always excited to call Nonni and Chinni and they always make time to watch Layla on the webcam and we did just that. Hurricane Layla made a mess while her grandparents watched, her dad laughed and her mom worked hard. Nonni asked what we were doing… still no idea. Maybe going to the beach or something… we’d figure it out.

After about an hour, Nonni and Chinni got bored (or just tired. or both?) so we said our good-byes and tried to figure out what to do. Layla made it easy – she decided to go lay down and take a nap. I don’t know if it was the heat, the waking up early, getting older or just plain boredom but I’ve never seen her go lay down by herself. I didn’t complain though as it let me play around with this new blogging software. Tamie went out for a while and I stayed with Layla as she slept.

Once the kid woke up, she immediately demanded to know where her mom was. Luckily Tamie called 10 minutes later to tell me, so we went and met her for lunch. Macau Meadows in Ebina – used to be decent but now? Not even the cute waitresses are worth it. The food has gotten progressively worse in the two years we’ve lived here… so much so that I think that’s the last time we’ll eat there. At least until the next time.

As we ate, Tamie mentioned there was a festival going on in Hon-Atsugi, a neighbouring city only two stations down (three minutes away by train). She seemed interested and I was curious so we decided to go check it out. Who doesn’t love a good festival? Street meat on sticks and cold beer at marked-up prices! Throw in a million people and 40 degree heat and you got yourself a grand old time!

At Ebina station there were already about a thousand people waiting around to head down to Hon-Atsugi. It’s easy to pick out the festival-goers as they are all wearing yukatas (summer kimonos). That, and the fact they’re standing on the same platform we are to get on the same train. The small crowd in Ebina was just a hint of what was to come!

Hon-Atsugi was packed. If I knew how to post pictures on here properly, I would post one. But pictures wouldn’t do justice to the scene we were in – throngs of people out enjoying the festivities. A throng, by my estimation, is just under a hundred thousand… and there were many throngs.

Layla discovered the joy of riding on my shoulders as she saw other kids propped up on unfortunate fathers sweating under the weight of their own offspring and wanted to join in. Always happy to oblige, I precariously balanced her atop my shoulders, trying to find a good gait to walk that didn’t bump into anyone and didn’t shake her too much. It seemed to work out well as she was enchanted just watching the moving crowds around her. I was jealous of her vantage point, but not nearly as jealous as Tamie =)

We picked up some chicken (on sticks) and beer (overpriced, but cold… and oh so delicious!) as we walked towards our ultimate goal – the big field where the fireworks were happening. Every summer festival in Japan has fireworks and every fireworks display is massive. Even our little town of Ebina has a summer festival with a decent fireworks display. Hon-Atsugi isn’t such a little town and their fireworks display was more than decent! To put it another way, Layla was able to watch the fireworks in Ebina but she got so scared tonight in Hon-Atsugi that she passed out. She forced herself to fall asleep just so she wouldn’t have to endure another second of sheer awesomeness. That’s how awesome it was.

Actually, the fireworks were definitely a good show – unfortunately, Layla was definitely scared and did put herself to sleep. We watched with at least a million of our closest neighbours as the sky lit up in various colours and shapes. Did you know they can make fireworks that look like hearts and happy faces? Even cartoon characters! I was disappointed there was no Mario though. The grand finale was called Niagara Falls and it was a display that stretched across the river and rained fireworks down upon us, looking like (surprisingly) a waterfall! It was a good way to end a good show.

Once the show ended, the fun began. The only problem with jamming a million people into a small area to watch fireworks is the battle royale you have to fight through when leaving. Luckily, people (mostly) are polite and stream out slowly and steadily. There is one benefit to having a kid on your shoulders – when someone cuts you off or steps on your foot you got to legs at head height that might ‘accidentally’ kick them.

It only took an hour to get out of the sea of people and there were no serious injuries (at least to us), so we counted our blessings and decided to walk home. It’s a nice feeling to know that we didn’t have to follow that stream of people back into the train station and cram into a sardine can for a long ride home.

All in all, not a bad day for doing nothing.