Each day is spent roughly like this – long breakfast buffet (the Miss takes forever to feed, and once she also emptied the entire contents of her stomach into her baby feeding chair, the water glass Kings tried to catch some of it in, down everything she was wearing, and in a puddle on the restaurant floor – they really broke out the rubber gloves, apron et al AND once she did it in the room too) followed by one major attraction a day and another long dinner after which it takes about two hours to hand wash any clothing items we need, clean bottles, clean kids, settle everyone into bed.
Welcome to Hopefully Educational Travel Trip With Circus The Kids Along.
The Circus At The Castle Park Entrance
Picture above was taken by one of the few Caucasians we see (and to date we’ve seen way, way fewer obviously Caucasian people than back home). He’s wearing a beanie, has curly dark blonde hair, a “Jewish nose”- and keeps speaking to us in Japanese. We have no idea what he’s saying. The only words I make out are when he returns the camera to Kings and finally responds to my thanks with “welcome.” (Rockstar btw has just learned to say “Do-shitashi-mashi-te” please don’t scream at my horrible spelling. And yes we have Jewish friends.)
Betcha didn’t know this:
(Well I didn’t)
It’s freezing. Actually all through the trip it’s been freezing. (Though virtually everywhere indoors we’ve been is vigorously heated.)
Rockstar in ski jacket and (I think) Good Luck Cat Pose and still freezing
We quickly duck into a noodle restaurant….
But not before this has happened to Elder Child.
Oh, you thought Elder Child requested to visit Shurijo Castle Park to soak up the rich cultural history of this part of Japan <snort> That’s someone else’s kids.
Ninjas. He was looking for ninjas. (Or samurai. I explained the difference, Yahoo! answers style. Here‘s one such thread.) Also I’ve mentioned to him the ninja turtles are an American invention. (They even speak with American accents and eat pizza, don’t they?) Even if they have European artists’ names (Yep. Pointed out there happens to be another famous Michelangelo out there.) Seriously though, there must be quite some people upset with the people who made up TMNT and Ninjago. Wonder how many letters those creators get every day along the Can We Please Not Torture History Quite Completely To Death? sort. The ton of money they make from licensing the toys might make up for it a bit.
And NO WE DID NOT THINK WE WOULD FIND NINJAS AT SHURIJO CASTLE PARK. They set us straight, back at the hotel. Can’t believe they managed to answer our questions without either falling over laughing or wanting to biff us on the nose <sheepish> but when you have a little kid who well, talks to his friends and goes to toy stores you will one day find yourself at the concierge of a nice hotel asking the staff if there is anywhere you can find ninjas.
Ok fine, Japanese medieval weapons museum. Or castle. Bingo!
This the kids doing some major running around:
Right near where the grey rocks are was a small strip of gravelly sand and belatedly I realize there is actually a sign I can’t read. It doesn’t take long for the guard behind us to stride up and say something we don’t understand but I correctly take to mean Rockstar is not to shuffle on the sand. The guard spends several minutes smoothing back the sand with his feet and bows stiffly to us as we leave…. oops I think we committed some major faux pas I don’t understand there…. There is a Japanese-speaking mum with a boy nearby, the boy had tried running around near Rockstar earlier (they would probably have started playing if left alone) before then climbing one of the low-hanging branches of the trees. His mum, wearing a Muslim headscarf, swiftly gets him out of the tree before the guard can reach them, when Rockstar gets stopped for gravel-shuffling…
No faux pas hère though…
–
And surprise, surprise:
Turns out both Rockstars really, really enjoy Japanese theater shows
Little Miss actually stopped mid-feeding herself a spicy tomato baby corn puff for the entire duration we were watching this (I moved her up front after taking the pic and realizing she was intrigued.). And Rockstar did not make one snarky comment (except at the very beginning to complain we had picked seats too far back – uh hello, 4th row bad? So we had to move up to the front corner.)
See? Everyone is all smiling and interested. Though I think Kings is smiling because the kids aren’t doing a nutty.
Unfortunately it suddenly started raining so we couldn’t finish the show. Which was why we went to Ryukyu Mura the next day to catch a few performances…
Too bad no ninja theme parks in Okinawa though I believe there must be a ninja theme park somewhere in Japan but still both Rockstars enjoyed themselves running around the park. Just look at their happy faces in the photos.