bookwormbird

Golden week is manic in Japan. The roads become grid-locked and the trains are packed. Everywhere is booked-up months in advance, so we decided to had no choice but to  stay around Yokohama and do some local exploring.

I think I mentioned that Saturday 29th we had been to a food fair at an International school: well the coup for that day was managing to buy this second-hand bike for George for ¥500 (about £3.50). Woohoo. Well done Dan. I also bought some of these Summer Oranges (see above). The boys had had some one day for their lunch and were raving about them. They are very sour/bitter and refreshing. So when we spotted some in the supermarket I thought we should all try some.

Kamakura

That afternoon we caught the train to Kamakura, and this time Dan showed us the beach. George got carried away with the paddling and ended up stripping off; I sat and read, but we all had a great time.

Sadly I spent the Sunday, Monday, and most of Tuesday in bed with a sinus headache that wouldn’t shift. However, by Tuesday, once the boys had returned from school, we all went to our neighbourhood sento. A sento is the communal baths.

You arrive, deposit your shoes in the lockers, pay, head into your single-sex bathing area, strip off, scrub yourself raw (or just give yourself a thorough washing), then head into one of the two hot bath areas. Then come out, wash again, and back into the water.

I love going to sentos. I find the communal naked thing very humbling and a great leveller. This time an old dear offered to scrub my back for me, and I obliged and it was just really lovely.

I must say that this particular sento wasn’t the most salubrious of places. The water and equipment was clean enough but it could do with a refurb. A lot of the tiling and grouting needed seeing to, but hey-ho, it was cheap and did the job. (Reminded me of the steam room of yore in Copeland Sports Centre if any of you ever went there!)

 

Thursday of Golden Week was another public holiday – Constitution Day, and I was beginning to feel better. Certainly better enough to head into Yokohama to the Bay Quarter shopping centre and have this fantastic pancake breakfast at a restaurant called ‘Butter’. We ate outside and the weather was warm but humid and it spotted with rain a little, but it was pretty refreshing. I clocked a Dad at another table with a bottle of beer and it was 10.30. Public holidays seem to be synonymous with booze.

After the breakfast we walked back to Sakuragicho station along the bay and the wind gets up. It blows George’s Minecraft cap off his head and it landed in the sea. He was really, really upset, but we weren’t able to retrieve it from where we were standing. I noticed that the wind was blowing the cap towards a jetty, so bless him, he runs over to the jetty and approaches one of the chaps there to try and save his cap. I keep an eye on the cap, and Dan loafs over to join George. After much patience the cap does drift in range of the chap with a pole and “Hurray!” he gets his hat back. Fortune favours the bold.

Things that go Bump in the Night

 

We experienced our first earthquake. It was in the middle of the night and the boys didn’t wake up. I dreamed that someone was knocking on the door, then the sound happened again and I woke up and realised it was the doors rattling around the house.

I checked in the morning that it was an earthquake and it was. So there’s a first.

 

Children’s Day

The 5th May is Children’s Day, or Kodomo no hi. It is celebrated by flying carp-shaped windsocks of varying colours. I had bought some carp-themed sweets for the boys from a sweet shop in Honmoku, which I gave them that morning. But they turned out to be crackers. The boys weren’t impressed.  However, we did make them hotdogs for breakfast in bed in return for the the breakfast in bed that they had prepared for us the day before (no reason!).

We then went into Yokohama and saw the giant carp displays.

It was pretty hot and we ambled around for the rest of the day. We stumbled upon a gathering of mascots outside the city chambers that were posing for a photo opportunity. Don’t know what that was all about, but it was kawaii.

Then we found a run-down mall and in one of the shops there was a pop-up workshop where the boys were able to have a go at screen printing a scarf. So we did that.

Then we came home and I snapped this picture of the big wheel all light up behind the Nihon Maru tall ship that resides in the harbour.

Enoshima

Finally, on the Sunday we got up fairly early and caught the train to Ofuna and then took the monorail to Enoshima. We’d bought a beach shelter and our plan was to go for a swim and have an explore around the island. We did all of this.

After descending the five flights of stairs to get back onto terra firma, it’s a walk along a bridge to the island of Enoshima.

I was snapping some interesting street furniture when Dan spots something and starts taking photos of it.

It took me a while to spot it, but it was so cool when I did……

The island itself was jammed with holiday makers and lots of bikers. We managed to find a real gem of a coffee house off the beaten track that served lunch.

We got chatting to the couple who were running it: the lady is Japanese and expecting a baby in July and they are going to name him George. The husband is Canadian.

Whilst we were there, in walks a Japanese gentleman in a kimono and these wooden stilty sandals. Intriguing. I’d never seen those before.

We had had a busy day and needed to get back to the house so George could have a playstation date with his pal (it was Bank Holiday Monday back in the UK) so we didn’t get much chance to explore Enoshima, but that’s a great excuse to go back and to meet the baby George.