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!
And here we are in TGI Fridays
These penguins looked so funny traipsing after the zoo-keeper that we had to take a vid!
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