Halloween

Halloween (ハロウィン） has become popular in Japan! (Wish I would have know this fact before coming; as I easily could have slid a couple of costumes into our suitcases.)  From what I could find, here in japan costumes run around ¥4,000+ or $40+, and the costumes are not ones my children would choose. Luckily we have a wonderful caring Grandma who saved our Halloween. J even was excited about the superhero costume; is there life after trains?  Thanks Grandma!

For Halloween, we didn't exactly go door to door trick-or-treating.  Instead, we went to an event sponsored and scripted by lady from England.  This morning she went around to some of her friends in the neighborhood and dropped candy off at their houses and explained to them exactly what to do when we came by. Tonight we met at a park and carved pumpkins (two for 30+ kids) and then went to door to door trick-or-treating at the homes where the candy had previously been dropped off.  There are other events in Japan around some of the train stations where stores will sponsor trick-or-treaters too. They tend to be very crowded and for the price of train tickets it would have been cheeper to buy our own candy. But, we had fun with those as well.  Overall a great Halloween!  

This is Bob the Builder and Iron Man.
J with some of his friends from school at the trick-or-treating party! (The men in uniforms in the background are firefighters--although they look like they are in costume.)

Shinkansen

Although we ride trains anytime we need to travel farther than we can get on our bicycles, we have yet to ride the Shinkansen (bullet train) this trip. We might not get a chance until the holidays. However, J already loves the Shinkansen. He reads about them in books at school, has a picture of one on his lunchbox, plays on an outside toy Shinkansen at school, and now we have one at our house. I think Japan was worth the trip just for the trains in J's mind.

Undokai! (Field Day)

I can't cover everything that has happen since we came to Japan; even thinking about it gives me a headache.  So I 'm just going to start this blog from Undokai.  Undokai, or Field or Exercise Day, is a really big deal in Japanese schools.  Moms and Dads take off work to come and watch as well and grandparents etc.  J's school had Undokai just after his first week there, so I had no idea what was going on.  It turned out to be a really neat event!

This was the ball game that the kids played.  There was a red team and a white team and each team tried to get as many balls as they could into the baskets before the time ran out.  J was on the white team and really enjoyed this game.

B and J doing a dance that the parents got to do with the children.   All orchestrated in Japanese of course.