The Difference a Week Makes

Last week, things were awful. By Friday I was SO ready to cash in my mommy chips and run away. 

What a difference a week makes. T is settling SO well into preschool. He nearly forgot to say good bye this morning after he got his indoor shoes on! From all accounts he's doing well. He loves the singing and playing outside on the playground! He wants to sing the ABCs now. 

Pickups can be rocky, but it's only week 2, so I'm willing to assume that will get better too. Today was actually super easy, so there's definitely hope.

We also cut out extra activities on Tuesday and Thursday for this week. I'm not sure if that or the naps or what helped, but the week has gone much smoother than last week. I'm so grateful because I don't think I could have survived a repeat of last week. 

Preschool begins

Unlike many moms, I don't have a first day of preschool picture. The first day was a half day and I stayed with Touma the whole time. I understand that with some kids it is probably necessary. For Touma, it just screwed up his nap schedule.

Touma did an 8 week stint in daycare after Raina was born. He loved it and maybe cried once when I left him! He also did a week of summer session at his current preschool. He also loved it and had a little adjustment, but nothing major. 

The two half days if preschool have really screwed up our rhythm this week. He loves going and just when he's completely settled (but not tired!), I have to pick him up. He's been an absolute nightmare both days. I'm really hoping that Friday, the first day of regular schedule, is better. I really need to end my week on a good note!

The hard days of Touma

Not sure who has had bad days more lately, me or Touma. To be honest, my bad day is usually caused by exhaustion and dealing with a disagreeable toddler. Touma is just the disagreeable toddler. 

This past week, we had two days that were punctuated by many tantrums. Thursday, he wanted a soccer ball. There were two to play with at play group. He wanted the one a friend had. To the tune of throw himself on the floor and rolling around crying. T doesn't do that sort of thing all that much, so it really was a sight to behold. Afterwards he perked up and wasn't in such a bad mood. Yay. He still got a pretty early bedtime.

Friday, I had CPR training. He got to play outside with other kids and have a great time. BUT he only got an hour or less nap in the stroller. Cue really crappy afternoon... Full of tears. I did film some of his antics and tried to snap him out if it using the footage. It did not work. At all. 

Saturday is always better because I don't deal with everything alone, but still it was a rough week.

Sleep, wherefore art thou, sleep

This week has been epically bad for sleep. The worst part is that I can't exactly point to one cause as to why. If I could, it might be easy to fix. 

1) Shimon is getting home earlier. 

When he was leaving the office at 10 or 11, it was easy to just go to bed. He'd get home so late that there was no point in staying awake. He'd only come home, shower, and go to bed anyway.

2) Little girl has a cold.

She has a cold and is waking twice instead of once at night. It wouldn't seem  like a big deal, but that extra waking has found us both falling asleep on the tatami at around 4am. She stays asleep, while I wake up super sore in the morning.

3) Toddler T hasn't decided to sleep until a certain time consistently. Generally speaking T wakes up at 6 or later. I can live with that. But then there's the occasional 5am wake up call if "Mama mama." This week that 5am conveniently fell in line with the Workd Cup final. So I didn't mind waking up. Problem? I haven't caught up on any sleep all week.

4) Being stupid. 

This one is all me. I should go to bed when all the crap is done around the house. That could be as early as 9. But do I?? No. I watch TV. Or work on class work for my online class. I usually do both. Then, by the time Shimon's almost home it seems silly to go to bed. So I wait for him.

Which lands me in the trouble I'm in now. I wake up feeling like a pile of poo. Feel that way most of the day. Go to bed feeling that way. Wash, rinse, repeat. 

Next week, I vow to get to bed earlier. But for now, I'll just have to do my best to make it through the weekend.

Wow, I look "special."

The No-good, very bad day

Yesterday I had to take Raina to the doctor. She has a slight cough that hasn't gotten better on its own. So, we had to go.

This is the first time that I had to take Raina and Touma to a doctor's office. I wasn't particularly looking forward to it. 

We arrive a bit before 11am, there weren't many people waiting. (In Japan, doctor's offices are mostly first come, first served. No appointments.) Good timing, I thought to myself. 

We got in and I filled paperwork out and waited about 10 minutes to see the doctor. Touma was not really behaving himself, but the staff were good about keeping him busy looking at books. That is, until Raina was done with the doctor. Then it was back to me chasing after him. Yeah, that was not fun. And he continued to be somewhat of a pill.

Then it was time to get the prescription filled. The pharmacy was close. Got there and was going to have Touma stay in the stroller. But there was a water cool. And a cup dispenser. He NEEDED out. 

It was actually good that I did as filling the prescription took longer than expected. He dispensed a cup every time he wanted a drink. 4 cups in less than 10 minutes. :( Finally!! Prescription is ready! Touma is not. Pharmacist gives me stickers to bribe him. They don't really work. We leave the pharmacy (step outside the door). I continue to struggle to get him in. Finally I forcefully put him in. He cries and yells.

We leave the building. Touma is crying the whole way. Old lady tries to "help." She just annoys me. I head to the supermarket.

Inside the door we run into a lady who works at the local playroom. She offers to stay with Touma as I run and get us lunch! Excellent timing!! I come back, with a sandwich for Touma and find he's calmed down. Yay!

By the time we got home, Touma was asleep. Raina was awake. I was exhausted. The rest of the day was not bad per se, just exhausting. It could not end quickly enough. 

  

New discovery!

I had no idea that blogger had a mobile app! I have a feeling that I'll post more pictures and tell a few more stories. Fingers crossed anyway!

So here are some pictures...

Smiley Raina! She's laying on a gorgeous quilt that was specially made for her. 

I don't want to be in this picture, Mom! Neither of these guys look particularly excited to have their picture taken. 

Here's to keeping up with posts!

Baby Raina has arrived

Even though most everyone has probably seen the Facebook update and followed some of what's happened since March... I think I need to make an update on my blog. Baby Raina Alice Yamamori has officially arrived.

She was born March 25th, 9 days after her predicted due date. We've had a bit of time adjusting (I will dedicate some future blogs to that topic), but Touma is gradually getting the hang of being a big brother. I am slowly getting the hang of being a mother of two. Shimon is slowly getting the hang of his new job and tries to spend as much time with us as possible. He's also getting the hang of being a father of two, but he's still better equipped for Touma than for Raina right now. It's only been two months, so I'll cut him some slack. ;-)

Morning after March 26th.

Look at the rosy red cheeks!

Now that things are settling down, I'll try to update with things that have happened over the last few months and keep on going strong through the summer. :-)

Poo

So, a few weeks ago a friend was telling me how her 10 month old pooed in the bath when her husband was in charge and how big of a mess it was. Needless to say, I laughed. A lot.

Well, as a consequence of that laugh... this week it was my turn.

In Japan, Touma and I do bath time together. And these days since I'm huge, it feels so nice to have some of the weight off due to buoyancy and all that. Goofing around in the bath with Touma is pretty fun. However, it was getting to be close to the end of bath time when I noticed a "floaty." Thank goodness I realized what it was and got toys, Touma, and myself out of the tub pretty quickly. If I hadn't noticed right away, things could have been much worse!

Luckily, I got the tub drained and cleaned and all toys washed and disinfected. I re-washed Touma and I as well. In general, the "poo in the tub" incident wasn't so bad. Just wish it had happened to Shimon and not to me! :-)

The Final Stretch

I've entered the 38th week of pregnancy and we're down to the home stretch. Baby could, in theory, come any time. Though the reality is that for the past two doctor's appointments the doctor has checked to see what's going on and came back with the same answer: nothing's changed. :-)

This time around I am more ready for this whole pregnancy thing to be over. Does that really mean I'm prepared for the long nights and the newborn cries? Not necessarily. What I do know is that I am ready to have a slimmer, lighter body again. I have seemingly forgotten how "fun" the end of pregnancy can be. Instead, I just feel heavy and irritable. All. The. Time. Poor Touma... I am much too short with him and don't really mean to be.

The best time of day for me is bath time. In Japan, generally parents and kids actually sit in the bath together and enjoy the bathing experience. SO... I take full advantage of sitting in a large tub full of warm water, Water is magic. It's the only time I feel fairly normal and my heavy body doesn't seem so heavy. Or course bath time doesn't last forever, which means that I have to come back to the reality of my heavy body at some point.

Today, I did some major "getting ready for baby" nesting. I washed a bunch of baby clothes and rearranged storage so that now there's more than enough storage for the new baby clothes and for cloth diapers for both kids. I still have to get drawer "locks" so that Touma can't make a big mess when he wakes up in the middle of the night, but I think that can be remedied tomorrow.

We are officially less than 2 weeks from my due date. I wouldn't mind being one day late (my due date is March 16th), but any later than that and I'll be annoyed. Touma was three days late, but who knows what will happen this time around. The doctors at my clinic keep saying that I need to get out and walk, but my main excuse is,.. how am I supposed to walk around a bunch (I walked for 2-3 hours sometimes when I was pregnant with Touma) with an active toddler? I do chase Touma a lot, so at this point that will have to be enough. :-)

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On Maternity Leave

Yep, that's right.. I'm officially on maternity leave. I was actually on leave from January 30th. In Japan, maternity leave begins 6 weeks before baby is born and end 8 weeks after. BUT after maternity leave, there's something called childcare leave (almost everybody takes it) that lasts about a year (depends on each person and whether there are slots in daycare or not).

The funny thing is that I got the flu the last day I was meant to teach (it started 2 days before that). So I missed saying goodbye to half of the students I've been teaching AND didn't get to turn in all of the graded papers for those classes.

All I have to say is that maternity leave would be great if I had someone to watch Touma for a few hours a couple times a week. Just so I could get some things done... like: get a hair cut, go to the dentist, get a massage (or even just see a chiropractor!), and sort out baby stuff. I have lots of baby clothes to wash and sort and try to figure out. But with a little dude around it is really hard. He likes to "help" sort. He also wants a lot of mommy attention. Then by the time he is in bed... I'm exhausted so all I want to do is veg (ie watch the Olympics) or go to bed early.

With all of this extra time, I've also become a lot less forgiving when it comes to some of Japan's "idiosyncracies."Such as the fact that daycare is publicly provided... except it is in very short supply in urban areas like Tokyo and Yokohama. BUT the government of Japan keeps spouting all sorts of nonsense about people needing to have more babies (the birthrate is well under replacement levels in Japan) and yet they do nothing to help people actually WANT to have more babies. Instead, there's just a lot of rhetoric and posturing and money always gets funneled into elderly programs because those are the voting constituents that seem to "count."

Then there is public space. Libraries are less friendly places for kids in Japan than shopping malls. Yup. The kids areas of libraries always have big signs about being quiet and they have no walls separating the kids section from the other sections. So... when toddlers make noise, as they are apt to do, a staff member (usually trying to speak very broken English and acting as if they are "sorry") comes over to kick you out. At the same library this has happened twice. Once because a grouchy old man kept complaining about the little ones, despite the fact that there were loads of open seats in quieter areas, and once this past week. My friend and I had corralled our kids in an area so they wouldn't run around and they couldn't escape. Yes, they were a bit noisy, but when the lady came over, she didn't actually identify the issue right away (the noise) and her explanation was that the area is "public space" so we needed to take our kids elsewhere. Apparently being taxpayers in Japan doesn't actually allow you to use a facility if you might have kids. I also asked if anyone had actually complained about the noise and she said no one had and that the staff had decided to tell us to move somewhere else. Other solutions she offered: corral the kids in the nursing room and let them be noisy there (um... a room with a chair and a changing table for two active toddlers to "run around" in?) or go back to the main kids area where there's nothing stopping them from running all over the place, into other sections and actually disturbing MORE people. So, I had a little go at her, said that Japan pretends to care about kids, but they don't actually care at all. Then we took the kids outside, where Touma threw snow and climbed the outside steps until it was time to actually go home.

So, maternity leave is just more time to try to entertain Touma and try not to lose my mind at the stupid rules and annoyances that make up everyday life in Japan. I think I'll take Touma to our regular library (smaller and closer to our house), where so far we haven't been told off yet when he runs all over the place.

Post-move and holiday update

On December 15th, we moved to a new apartment. Between the move and the holidays, I haven't had time to post anything! These things happen. :-)

Because we moved right before the holidays, Christmas didn't get the build up that I generally like to have. Not much in the way of baking and very little in the way of decorating. It was a little sad, but at least we are moved and we won't be doing that again for a very long time! (We have vowed to not rent ever again after this! We'll see if that still holds up in a few years.)

Touma and I were lucky enough to be invited to my friend Melanie's for Christmas dinner and the afternoon. Touma had a lot of fun running around after big kids (ages 8, 6, and 5) and it was nice to not have to spend the day with just the two of us.

Christmas night we left for my mother-in-laws for the New Year. We were gone nearly two weeks. Touma had a great time and I mostly did too. However, I do believe that two weeks away from home and sleeping on the floor on a futon was just too much. Since this is the last time we'll be able to visit for awhile, it was ok, but I'm not going to do "floor sleeping" while pregnant ever again! It's just not comfortable!

I will have to post some pictures from our time away. We really did have fun. Touma learned to like strawberries... picked straight from the vine! We went on a strawberry picking expedition and my goodness those berries were delicious. The small farm had a lot of interest in picking over the new year, so we could only pick and eat, but not take any home. That was fine by me! I have never had such delicious berries before. YUM!

We also went to the aquarium in Shimonoseki. Touma's favorite part was probably the ramp that went all the way down to the bottom of the big penguin tank. He ran all the way down and just loved every moment. He did enjoy the fish and the penguins, but the ramp was seriously the highlight. Give him a few years and the dolphins and fish might start to win his attention.

Hope everyone else had a lovely holiday season! Due to the upheaval around the holidays I took a break from cards of any sort. Next year, I'll pick it up again. 

Done. Done done done done!

I'm done. With what?? I am done with my online course for my masters in TESOL. Now I am far from done with the degree, but that doesn't take away from the satisfaction of being done with this course.

Without going into all the gory details, I'll just say that of the three classes I have taken so far this one has been the most frustrating and least enjoyable. The content (methods and materials) could have been a lot of fun to learn and to experiment with. However, it wasn't. It was just a lot of frustration and a lot of work.

Which is why I am so happy to be done! I wish I could celebrate. But I think I'll just watch an episode of the Daily Show and go to bed early. I have packing to do tomorrow!

Surprised??

So, it seems that every time I make a resolution to be better about my blog, I totally fail. That means I am no longer going to make any promises about keeping up my blog, rather I will be realistic and say that I will do my best to post every once in awhile. Sometimes the stretches between will be long and other times not so long. I started this blog at a time in my life when I was far less busy and had ample time to tell witty anecdotes with pictures (with little captions and everything!) and these days I just don't have that kind of time. This is my big disclaimer, I suppose, about this blog. All of the above words can be summed up with: I'll do my best.

"My best" may get to be better as of February 3rd. Why, you may ask, am I even discussing a date so far in the future? Well, that is that last possible day that I can work. In Japan, legally I am allowed 6 weeks before birth and 8 weeks after birth for maternity leave. That's right. My school won't let me work after the 3rd. So there will be two more days a week when I can try to squeeze in a little time on the blog.

I guess this is a little late to announce, but for anyone who didn't already know, we are expecting baby 2 on March 16th. The past two appointments, baby has not been cooperative so we don't know if we are expecting a boy or a girl. The doctor said maybe a girl, but with zero degree of certainty as she didn't see anything. :-( My next appointment is this Friday, so cross your fingers at 10:30am Japan time and maybe we'll have an answer!

In other news, we are moving! This Sunday we are moving apartments. We are only moving to an apartment about 5 minutes drive away, but we still have an awful lot of stuff to haul and it's still not fun to pack. We will be moving to a place where Touma will have his own room, my kitchen will have a decent amount of storage, and we can have a kotatsu. For anyone who is reading and doesn't know what a kotatsu is, it is a short, heated table (click here to get an idea). It's  very dangerous as you never want to move away from the kotatsu and you could get stuck there until springtime! But it will be the first time I've had one since living in Yamagata, so I'm quite excited. Also, it's nice to sit and munch on mandarin oranges under a kotatsu.

Ok, that was my little update post. No promises. I'll just try to do better. :-)

Misadventures in Parenting...

Yesterday, we had playgroup at a new shopping center called Mark Is. (Yup, that is the real name. I initially thought it was Mark 15 since that would somehow make more sense... but alas, Mark Is.)

It has a rooftop garden and a fabulous kids floor. After lots of play, exploring the garden, and eating lunch, we moved inside to the air conditioning and an area with cute little kid sized tables. It was a great, cool place to have the kids. Plus, there was a bank of coin lockers and vending machines. Both of those things Touma loves. LOVES!!

After some free play, I realized there was a stinky boy that needed changing and we headed to the family toilet. It was really nice. It had new fangled buttons and everything for opening and closing the doors. No more manual closing of doors...

Once Touma was changed, we left the beautiful toilet to go play with the other kids... Until he remembered the cool bathroom and headed back in the direction of the cool button-ed and automatic door-ed bathroom. I chased after him just as he entered the toilet and pushed the close button... locking himself in the bathroom just in time to have a final, panicked look at mom as the door shut.

Poor baby! Starts to panic and there's nothing I can do since the emergency call button is inside the bathroom along with him. Luckily, some kind ladies used the emergency call button in the regular bathroom and got someone to come and open the door. He was super hysterical by the time the door was opened, but remarkably he was dry-eyed in seconds after I picked him up.

I'll have to stop teaching him to push buttons until he's a bit taller and can reach both the "close" and "open" buttons.

Toddlerhood

Yep, I think it's time to declare it... Touma is officially a toddler. How do I know that this milestone has been reached? I think it can be explained in one word. Tantrums. Yup, we are definitely there.

Our latest, and by far most melodramatic, tantrum occurred on Tuesday. It was a classic mealtime tantrum. We'd managed to begin dinner. However, in less than 10 minutes Touma was objecting to everything: the food, the high chair, different food, the water bottle, and the high chair belt. That last one was the real culprit, I suspect. He hates being strapped in.

When he started emptying the entirety of the tray's contents onto the floor, I got him out of the chair. Only for more crying and flailing... all the while, I am trying to keep my cool, while trying to avoid having noodles glued to my floor. Meaning, I was picking them up and putting them back into the bowl from which they had been dumped. Sigh.

As the drama continued, I decided that letting it run its course would be best. Cuddling was not working. Feeding him was not working. Nothing. Was. Working.

And then, as quickly as it began, the storm subsided. How? Touma found the yogurt that I had set down, but had not given him, when he started the whole drama in the first place. He found the spoon. He fed himself. And suddenly, all was right with the world. Say wha!?!

So, I fed him yogurt. And he ate, two bowls of plain yogurt. For the third bowl, I smooshed up some of the hamburger he'd refused to eat and mixed it with the yogurt... and down that went too!

I do have some post-tantrum pictures. Mostly, he if very intent on the yogurt...

Looking down at the spoon about to take another bite.

 The second picture needs a little explanation. After all that fuss, I noticed that Touma seemed to have a huge booger coming out his nose. Which was funny enough. Until I realized that it wasn't a booger, it was a bit of hamburger... most likely from before the tantrum even began! Baby noses are quite good hiding places for all sorts of things... including snacks being saved for later.

A somewhat blurry photo of the "booger"

Wedding 2

This year has been quite the year for weddings. It's not the year with the most weddings, but so far it's the year I've been able to attend the most (only 2, but still...). Being in Japan for most of the past 11 years has meant foregoing many special events, but this year the weddings were in my "neighborhood."

Our first wedding was in Seoul. The second was last weekend in Shizuoka.
My friend Mike, who I've known for 10 years (!!), got married. Originally I was going to go by myself. However, due to work, Shimon was away and Touma got to be my wedding date again. He was a trooper. We made it down and back with no major problems.

He also slept through a majority of the reception, which allowed me to have a bit more fun than if I'd been chasing him the whole time. Sadly, I didn't take many pictures, but have a friend who will send me some (he had a pretty big camera which beat my little point and shoot!).

When I get more pics, I will post them. For now I'll leave you with this one...

Family Outing

This past Sunday, I decided it was a good time to go on a bit of an outing. We hadn't done anything like that in awhile and since the weather was gorgeous, I suggested it. Japan is really amazing with all sorts of day trip guides and things, but we didn't actually own one. We remedied that and then decided on what route we would take.

Shimon chose one that would take us near Mt. Fuji and would be relatively easy to navigate. If we went in the opposite direction (toward Chiba prefecture), we would definitely get stuck in traffic, which was another factor in the choice.

The drive was gorgeous. We didn't hit much traffic and we made it to near Mt. Fuji in decent time. We were very lucky to be able to get a glimpse of the mountain as we drove in. Sadly, as we got closer to our actual destination the mountain disappeared.

We were headed to a lake called Yamanaka-ko (Yamanaka Lake). There are 5 (I think!) lakes that surround Mt. Fuji and this one just happened to be one of them. We drove part way around the lake until we found a parking lot. You can tell you have left the metropolitan area when all the parking is free!!

There are nice bike paths around the lake and a lot of little shops offering bike rental. Shimon went to check the place out. Turns out that there was a tandem bike with a small baby seat attached. There was no helmet, and normally I would be a stickler, but as we wouldn't be crossing any roads I decided we'd take it just the once. (We really need to get on the bike situation for me anyway....)

So we rented the tandem bike.

And we're ready to go!

I actually didn't ride up front. I let Shimon steer as I was a little nervous to do it. I have to say that riding in the back is weird because the handles are just for show. But your instinct (or at least mine) was to try and steer. It's a very weird feeling!

We road a ways to park area where we got off and walked around.

Run to dad....

Run to mom!

This was a fun game we played while Shimon took lots of pictures. Back and forth, back and forth. Eventually we had to stop and return to where we parked the bike because we only had it for an hour. Walking back Touma got a ride!

This was the first time Touma has really been stable enough to do this.

After returning the bike we ended up having some noodles for a late lunch. However, the most entertaining thing about lunch was Touma demonstrating his new "skill."

Whatcha diggin' for son?

Our Korean Adventure!

Following Golden Week, I had to work on Wednesday and Thursday and then Touma and I were off to Seoul, South Korea. It was a very spur of the moment trip (plans were made AFTER our tickets for the Golden Week holiday had been made!), but it was necessary.

My very dear friend, Ji Yon, was getting married on May 10th and I really wanted to be there. Having spent most of the last 10 years in Japan it means that I have missed many weddings of friends and family. This year seems to be a banner year for both of those things and I was going to try to be at a few if I could. So... Touma and I were off on an evening flight to Seoul.

We flew out on Korean Air from Haneda. I have to sing the praises of Korean Air. The flight attendants were wonderful about Touma - one even filled out the majority of our customs forms! And even though the flight was less than two hours, we got dinner! I would recommend them to anyone. :-)

First up, was the wedding. We arrived Thursday evening and the wedding was Friday evening. We spent the day with Ji Yon's good friend Sunny (she was the perfect tour guide!!) who showed us around a bit and made sure we got to the wedding venue in one piece. At a Korean wedding, friends of the bride go and see her and take pictures before the ceremony begins.

In the midst of taking photos!

Touma was a good date, but since he's only 1 we had to explore the venue thoroughly. It was on the Han River in Seoul, so we had to check that out too!

Checking things out!

My handsome date!(Look at the hydrangeas!! Gorgeous!)

After the wedding, we actually got a ride back with Ji Yon's older sister and brother-in-law, which meant that we didn't have to climb in the back of a taxi. The taxis (the actual cars) are nicer and newer than Japanese cars, but the actually driving had me a little nervous - red lights seem to be optional! Eek!

The next day we had a very low-key morning and then headed out to Yongsan station to meet Colleen. Her husband is stationed in Seoul with the military and she's been there a year. Our connection is funny... we've known each other most of our lives and to top it off she married, Pat, who was a neighbor of ours growing up! Ha! And we finally meet after many years in Seoul.

 Colleen got advice from some friends about where to take us and we ended up at the Korean National Museum. I was very impressed that the museum was free and had a children's museum. It was so great!

Exhibit of different types of bells. Touma thought he was spinning the wheel all by himself!

The kids museum was wonderful for Touma. He even made a little friend at one point. After all that running around, he crashed and we were able to get some coffee and chill for a bit.

That evening we met my friend, Sam. We had been in the same program in Hawaii. He was on his last semester when I entered the program. He actually took a teaching job at a university in Seoul and has been there ever since. We met him and found a nice Korean restaurant and made an evening of it. One thing about Korea that is a stark contrast from Japan is that even if there aren't baby seats or provisions for little ones the staff and restaurants are all welcoming of babies and kids. Even though there was no seat for Touma, no one seemed to be bent out of shape when he started making noise and not being able to sit still.

After dinner we walked around a bit, saw a few of the sights downtown before getting Colleen to her subway and bidding her farewell.

Two Alaskans in Seoul.

The last day we spent the day doing all the "Seoul" things we could. Eating lots and going to a new museum, the Museum of Modern Korean History. This one also had a kids section. Though it wasn't quite as interactive for Touma's age. We also saw some of the famous sites in Seoul.

Touma and Sam (kind of), this is the only pic with Sam in it. I'm so bad at taking pictures these days!

And we also saw the statue of the King (or Emperor, not sure the title!) who "invented" Hangul. I'm thinking that there were some other scholars involved, but he gets all the credit.

I really want to sing Korea's praises on being a kid friendly place. Even though they have a very low birthrate, much like Japan, the people everywhere were much friendlier. From college kids to grannies, everyone was wonderful. If anyone wants a quick getaway (quick from Japan anyway...), Korea totally has my endorsement!

The Golden Week

For the first time in all the years my husband and I have been together, Shimon took all of Golden Week off. Those of you who don't know a whole lot about Japan or Golden Week, allow me to explain. Japanese workers are allowed on average 20 paid holidays a year. Workers generally do two things a) never use the holidays or b) use them when they are sick (even though sick days are allotted as well). This year there were three work days in the middle between two long weekends. However, and this is the real breakthrough, Shimon took those three days off and had a full 10 day holiday!

To save money, Touma and I left earlier (saving about 30,000 yen+) and Shimon followed on the Saturday. We hung around my husband's hometown most of the time seeing some of his friends, going to an onsen in Kyushu overnight, and playing at playgrounds and other places with little guy.

As a picture's worth a thousand words... here are some of the highlights...

Mealtimes became the main attraction!

Trying to climb up is at least as fun as going down

Exploring the swings with Dad

This kid already loves the ocean!

Family portrait...

The kabuto (helmet) didn't last too long!