Play Halls

I can't ride off into the sunset without a word or two about the "children's play halls" (jidoukan, 児童館) that you can find here in Japan. These are indoor / outdoor play places to which you can bring your kid (s). Here's the thing though --- they're free . I know there are places like this in the US, but I don't know about any of this caliber that are totally free.

All you (typically) have to do is sign in with your kid's name and age (I assume so they have an idea of ​​who all is there in an emergency) and then play as long as you want. I will say that most of them have the slightly worn air of a public school. The toys and stuff are pretty "well-loved".

But I will also say that there are a few local ones that have saved my sanity more than once, particularly on rainy days. They have staff to supervise but you can't usually just leave your kid there. I think some may offer short term babysitting, but that may have a fee involved.  

Most offer "mommy & me" type classes like dance or arts & crafts that can also be totally free. They are a fantastic way to find other kids to play with if you are a stay-at-home mom and they can keep you from having to buy new toys to keep your kid entertained.  

To find your local ones you can talk to other moms (how I learned about them), call your city office or even try typing the kanji I gave above into GoogleMaps. You might get lucky. Also, if you can find one play hall they may have information (maps etc.) on others in your prefecture.

Now some pictures! These were all taken at one particular play hall here in Ota but we have been to a few. There is another one located at the Gunma Children's Castle park which I wrote about here.

outside

new toys!

slides and light-up walls

bins and bins of toys, cars, houses .....

 a strictly supervised trampoline (one person at a time only!) that is
still a little terrifying for this mama

big kids playing ping-pong

a library, all Japanese of course

I found a funny set of encyclopedia, written in an odd mash-up
of English and Japanese. the entries were funny to me.

I find myself at a bit of a disadvantage in terms of knowing what kinds of entertainment options are available for kids in the US.  After all, I've never been a parent there except for a week or two here and there!  If there are any places similar to this (and free!) that I don't know about please comment!

Bento Bonanza

If you have a Pinterest account, you most likely know to what "bento" refers.  For anyone unfamiliar, they're the little Japanese lunch boxes with food arranged in an artistic or cute design.  They've gotten kind of popular in the US, mainly with the types of people who spend way too much time on Pinterest (myself included).  Way back in the day, I did a post about a nearby take-out bento place.  I can report that we ate there last night and it is much the same as it was then.  It's fun for me to read that post now.....oh, the days when everything was exciting and new....

Anyway, this post is going to be specifically about the basic bento-making supplies available here.  When I found myself with a toddler I became a little bit more interested in the idea of making bento-type lunch presentations.  In my opinion, bento-style lunches and toddlers go really well together.  I don't get too crazy with the artistic presentation but I did go on a search (at the local department/dollar stores) for tiny cookie cutters.

Imagine my fascination when I found the following....

a kit to turn your rice into penguins

a fancy gizmo to cut the bread off of  sandwiches

millions of cute skewers

elaborate kits to put faces on rice balls

picks, tweezers, punches, oh my....

more skewers

my personal favorite....turn your rice into
the Shinkansen

turn your wienies into sea creatures

tiny, oh so tiny, sauce bottles

Folks, this is just a small selection.  I like to imagine how excited American bento-Pinteresters would be if they could get their hands on this stuff.  And then I like to imagine what many American moms would do if they were expected to make penguin-train-octopus masterpieces every morning....yikes.

Anyone ever seen bento-making supplies anywhere in the US?  Other than cookie cutters?

Photo Shoot

A few weeks ago I took Cora to a local chain photo studio called Studio Alice.  Studio Alice is a popular chain with many, many locations all over Japan (the website is all in Japanese).   It was fairly similar to a kid/family photo studio in the US but there are a few differences here and there.  

Studio Alice caters mainly to child photo shoots, but can accommodate taking portraits of entire families.  You can bring your child with their own regular dress clothes (suit, tie, frilly dress etc.) but a very popular thing to do is take your kid and dress them up in Studio Alice's elaborate costumes including fake hair and makeup if you so choose.  (It reminds me a bit of those old Glamour Shot setups that were so popular when I was in middle school.)  The costumes range from Disney princess dresses, Halloween-type characters and traditional Japanese kimonos.  As mentioned in my previous post, this is also a popular place to bring your child for their Shichi-Go-San photos.

Of course, I wanted to have Cora's photos taken in a little kimono because, well, when in Rome, right?  It's an opportunity that can't be passed up while we're here.  When they presented me with the options for fake hair I was so enormously entertained that I make the foolish mistake of letting them put some on her.  It was funny, but so not worth the time and effort.  If you're ever in the same situation, be smarter than me and don't try to put fake hair on a squirmy almost-two year old.  I was there with an American friend and we took some shots her kids while wearing the fake hair but none of them turned out so great.  Multiple tiny kids and elaborate fake hairdos?  I have no idea what we were thinking.  ;)

Disclaimer: Studio Alice doesn't allow you to take photos inside the store for obvious reasons but you can take video.  So the shots below are mostly stills from videos we took, which is why they aren't that great. 

I grabbed this shot of the walls of costumery that greets you when you walk in

The photos below are stills from when we were getting Cora ready.  You can see some of the fake hair if you look closely.  Note that my iPhone is the only thing keeping her still for the hair-fixing.  And in the dressing photo she is actively trying to run away.  Photo shoots are not her thing, unsurprisingly.

 Below she is waiting somewhat patiently in the play area.  The fake hair is blessedly gone by this point.

 And finally, below is the best shot we got.  All in all, I'm pretty happy with it.  Note that she isn't wearing shoes because she was having no part whatsoever of the matching geta, which are those Japanese-style wooden flip-flops.  It's also a little blurry but I'm going to tell everyone that it was an artistic choice and not because my kid won't sit still for more than five seconds at a time.  And as for what she is looking up at, it was me jumping around and singing off-key like an absolute idiot in an attempt to distract her into being still.  I have heard many interpretations of that expression but I know for a fact that she's thinking " OMG, Mama's lost her mind!".

After we took the photos we sat down to review them and pick a package.  The packaging and pricing was fairly comparable to what you would see in the US but they would not sell me digital copies now.  After one year I can go get them on a CD for a nominal fee.  Not a big fan of that but whatever.  So I took the copies they gave me and scanned them.

Although it was not the most relaxing day I've ever had, I'm really glad we did it and I know that one day far in the future we'll look at them and remember that crazy time when we lived in Japan.  :D

7-5-3

You might be thinking "What kind of post title is that?  Did she forget to proofread?"  No, I did not. ;)  

It refers to a Japanese tradition called "Shichi-Go-San" which is the subject of today's post. Shichi-Go-San translates to "seven-five-three".  The tradition, in a nutshell, involves dressing your 3, 5 and 7 year old kids up to go take pictures of them, visit a shrine and/or have a party.  Traditionally the day to do this is November 15th, but since it isn't a national holiday most families do it on the closest weekend.  The tradition goes back as far as 800 A.D but changed a good bit around the 1800's and has stayed basically the same since.

I have an American friend here who has a 2 1/2 year old daughter.  She, in turn, is friends with a Japanese family who was kind enough to offer to do Shichi-Go-San with her daughter (I'll call my friend "M" and her daughter "R" in order to somewhat protect their identity). I was fortunate enough to be invited as the official photographer/blogger of the event.

This Japanese family actually has their own "family kimono" that has been passed down through three generations. So R was the fourth to get to wear it.  Not all families have their own real family kimono these days.  Many families will rent them for dress-up occasions as they are rather expensive.  

You may be wondering why I'm posting about this now as it isn't November.  Well, (and this is information that I could find nowhere else on the Internet but I have it on authority from actual Japanese people) if you have your own family kimono (or even if you rent, I suppose) you can opt to also do a kind of "preview" Shichi-Go-San in the spring.  This is for two reasons: 1) you can get pictures outdoors with the spring flowers and 2) you can get pictures of the kids before they get their summer tan.

You also may be wondering why we are doing this when R is only 2 1/2 years old.  It's traditional to do it all in the year the child turns three, even if their birthday hasn't passed yet.  Alternately, some families may choose to use the East Asian method of calculating age, in which a child is one year old at birth and gains a year on each lunar new year.

We started at a hair salon near the home of our host family (run by a family friend), where R was given a fancy updo.

We moved into a side room in the hair salon where the stylist (who is also known as a "kimono master") proceeded to dress R up in the many layers of a three-year-old's kimono.  I'll stop here and praise R, because she was extremely patient and well-behaved during all this.  I couldn't help but think of my own child, who wouldn't have stood for it, no way, no how (and I know this for a fact, but more on that in a later post).

After she was finished, we took a trip to a local shrine where we took family photos.  And then we went to a local park for more photos.  Below is one of my personal favorites.

Many thanks to M and her family for inviting me to see a Shichi-Go-San and for allowing me to blog about it!

Peace of Mind

So as I've mentioned before, we all go to the doctor in Tokyo.  Up until this point Cora has gone to Tokyo for all her checkups and vaccinations.   But I have been aware for some time that we should perhaps come up with a plan for dealing with a sick baby that does NOT involve a two-hour (one way) trip into the city.

Fortunately, we have been incredibly lucky in that Cora is ridiculously healthy (knock on wood) and, up until this point, hasn't had so much as a cold.  But, again, I was aware that I was playing a risky game.

So....a couple of days ago we adventured off to a local pediatrician.  And by "local" read "a real, live Japanese doctor with limited English skills".  We had heard about this guy through the local expat community and another expat mom who had been to him once actually accompanied us.  His office is less than thirty minutes by car.  Cora isn't sick, I just took her for a checkup so we could meet this guy and get the low-down on his operation in hopes that when she is finally sick I won't be quite so crazed-chicken-with-it's-head-cut-off.

I also took a picture of the inside, but won't post it
because, well, it just looked like a doctor's waiting room.
and it was full of sick kids who don't need their picture
all over the Internets

Japanese doctors are a little notorious for being....different from western doctors.  Probably the #1 issue I've heard is that Japanese doctors don't like to be asked questions.  And they aren't used to it because they are so highly respected in this culture that whatever they say is taken as gospel, no questions asked.   Now, you might be thinking, "didn't a Japanese doctor deliver Cora?".......Yes, but he had extensive experience outside Japan and had lived and studied for some time in the US.  And he spoke perfect English.  This guy here, on the other hand, was the real deal.

So, how did it go?  Pretty well, actually.  The doctor was a little confused by the visit and called it "unusual" but seemed to understand what I was trying to accomplish and politely invited us to "yes, please, come back if baby is sick.".  He was pleasant and spoke much better English than I was expecting.  As for the question thing, I'm not really one for second-guessing doctors (I suppose I'm a little Japanese that way) so I can't really speak to that.  Plus Cora didn't acually have anything wrong with her.

The process of checking in was a little "unusual" for me though.  (Never having taken a child to a pediatrician in the US I'm sort of assuming that it's the same as going to any other doctor.)

So some things that were unusual:

1. He doesn't really make appointments.  You can call to consult (but his staff doesn't speak any English so you would have to be able to convince them to just let you talk to him) but otherwise you just bring your kid in and take a number.  He does have a quarantine area if your kid has, say, chicken pox.
2. Most people seemed to take a number and then go wait in their car until they thought they might be up.  Probably to limit their contact with germs and.....
3. .....the few people that did wait in the waiting room all had their face masks on. In fact, everyone but us had masks on.  I am betting it's standard practice when you go to the doctor here.   Gotta have your face mask.  (In case you're wondering, no I don't own any and never wear them.  I'm a clueless foreigner, remember?)
4. And probably the most mind-boggling for me was that the paperwork I had to fill out was limited to a half sheet with name, birthdate and contact information.  You know sometimes when you go to the doctor and you have to sign in on a little sheet first?  Then they give you a huge clipboard full of papers to write down your life story?  Well, here, it was just the sign-in sheet.  That was it!  No endless paperwork!  They didn't even ask for insurance information (although for the record it was really cheap).  Anyway, I was completely thrown off by that and who knows what I wrote down because I was not grasping at the time that there would be no more chances to offer information.  They gave us a little card with Cora's name in Japanese and an ID# for the next time we come and I think we can just show them the card and that's it.

But let's hope I never have to use it. :)