Felix's Japanese 'Home-stay' friend, Kakeru

So, this weekend saw the exchange visit from Felix's home-stay, where the kids from The British School in Tokyo go and stay with a child from the Japanese Wako Elementary School, which is nearby. Last November, Felix stayed with Kakeru for the weekend, and this weekend it was Kakeru's turn to stay with us. Despite the fact that Kakeru speaks very little English, and we very little Japanese, they seemed to have a lovely time, and played really well. He was such a sweet boy and just seemed to giggle at everything, and was very laid back!

I picked him up from school with Felix and Neve on Friday, fed them all with chocolate biscuits on the way home (we didn't stop to think that a 30 min walk home is rather a lot for a Japanese kid!), then they played Nerf guns, Wii, and we made a pizza. We then watched Dr Who (but Kakeru fell asleep part way through - poor lad - I think he was exhausted!)

We had to wake up earlyish on Saturday as we'd agreed to take some work visitors for a mini tour. The weather is beautiful at this time of year - we've had clear blue skies and crisp dry sunshine for about 2 months (the grass goes brown in the winter here - all very odd) We went up the Tokyo Metropolitan building (affords an amazing view of the city) and we got to see Fuji (he's very sky in the Summer!). Then we took the guys down Takeshite Dori (Tacky Shitty street) to see the Harajuku fasions and left them in the Oriental Bazaar to buy souvenirs, and trekked off to the Aquarium (stopping at McD's for lunch - Kakeru is going to think that English people live on total junk food!)

It was great - lots of beautiful fish, huge tuna, hammerhead sharks, and penguins. The aquarium and zoo are both run by the Tokyo government, so they are heavily subsidised, well run, and surprisingly good! We stopped for a cuppa by the vending machines, and the kids taught Kakeru the art of diving under vending machines to find money - he found this hilarious (Oh dear - I think we've taught him bad ways!) but he did find 161 yen (and Neve 600 odd yen - about £5!) Then they went running around after the rolling pennies (again, not very Japanese wethink! Still he found it lots of fun!)

After the aquarium we headed back into Shibuya and went out to TGI Fridays. We had expected Kakeru to be used to the lights of Shibuya but he seemed star-struck, and it occured to us that you never see Japanese kids out in Shibuya at night, so perhaps he'd never been! We got back around 8pm - we put the kids straight to bed, and Kakeru was asleep very quickly!

The next morning he slept in until almost 10am! The kids then went off by themselves to find 'stray' balls in the University's playing pitches (a short walk from here) Again, he seemed amazed that I was letting them all out to play by themselves, but bless him, he seemed to go with the flow! Ross drove him home at lunchtime. Despite the fact that none of us were really able to communicate, all in all we had a lovely weekend, and his mum emailed to say he'd had a great time!

 Mount Fuji-san - not as clear as it has been, but not bad considering it's 100km away!

 Here we all are at the top - Felix is the one who looks like me, Kakeru doesn't! The 'criss-cross' building is an art-school, it's next door to my office.

 The kids on the aquarium wall

 The aquarium building

 Felix infront of the shark tank

 sharks

 the huge tuna aquarium

 pretty fish

 ...more pretty fish

 here we all are infront of the really shiny tuna

 The kids infront of the wave pool

 Really cute penguins

 ...and the penguins underground

 This penguin was following Kakeru's finger - it was very funny!

 Nice penguin pool

 Neve well into the vending machine 'treasure-hunt!

 Ross in the sunshine

 Kakeru getting stuck in! The cleaner leant the kids her broom so they could reach further!

 The aqarium is right by the sea

 ...wth a beautiful 'infinity ' pool

 Here are the kids rolling pennies infront of the aquarium

 There were also some jugglers there

 And here we are in TGI Fridays

These penguins looked so funny traipsing after the zoo-keeper that we had to take a vid!

Christmas Courtesy of the US of A

Lovely IMJ invited Ross to a meeting just before Christmas, how considerate are they! Therefore, all our Christmas presents were much more interesting (and better VFM!) than they would have been if bought here!

This would not have been my idea but, all credit to Ross, they did go down exceptionally well, and Felix is the envy of the boys in his class. The only downside is that our flat seems to have sprouted a carpet of Nerf gun bullets. Neve seems to like them too, poor girl!

PS Felix had just got out of bed, which explains why he looks a little 'out of it'!

 This one fires enourmous bullets - the missile launcher

This is the one with the tripod

 This is the pistol

 ...and this one fires three at once!

This is a big one

And the piece de resistance - the automatic machine gun!

The Braids are out!

So, the braids came out and here's the immediate aftermath! Bit wild, but calmed down after some serious hair-conditioning!

Thailand Day 16

The alarm went off at 0445. Oh Joy.

Our driver picked us up at 0515 so that we would be at the airport for 0600 check in. We said farewell to John the guide and gave him his tip.

Journey home was straighforward and we arrived back at our apartment at 1900 Japan time. Total travel time 12 hours.

We then had the fun of unpacking all of our souvenirs some of which we had forgotten that we had bought. All in all I think we managed to bring back about 30kg of stuff, our luggage allowance was nearly at the maximum.

We bought

Budda face wood carving
Chilli sauce
Fish Sauce
Oyster Sauce
Honey
4 boxes coconut crackers
2 triangle cushions
1 embroidered dragon
1 embrodered elephant
4 splat toys
1 rat
3 croaking wooden frogs
2 embrodered cushion covers
1 water proof bag
1 wok and cooking utensil
Green curry paste
Red curry paste
Laser disco light
3 t shirts
4 purses
4 scarfs
1 woolley bag
1 sunshine mat
2 Zoids
3 paper lamps
Elephant dump paper notebook
Skull and cross bones danger sign
1 set of bamboo cups
2 golden rabbit money boxes
Various necklaces, earings and bracelets
Catapult
and a partridge in a pear tree (not photographed)

Happy New Year

Thailand Day 15

We got up early on New Years Day. Not so nice after late night and lots of beer but we wanted to get back to Bangkok in time to do some shopping. We caught the 1000 ferry and then  our driver picked us up for the 4 hour journey back to Bangkok. We were in the same hotel as before. After checking in and getting our final briefing from John we hailed a Taxi meter to take us back to Chatuchak market.

We explored the market even further than last time. There are over 6000 vendors and I think it would take several days to see every thing. We had mission to find a wood carved budda head. After looking at a number of stalls we manged to find what we wanted. The size we chose would fit exactly in our big suitcase for the journey home.

From the market we headed to Khao San Road which is the main western tourist night spot area. We picked up the last few items we wanted to buy and then had dinner.

After dinner we took our final Tuk Tuk journey back to the hotel for early night as the next day was going to be a very early start.