Nathan's Birthday

Nate's 10th birthday was this past weekend. Since he is entering double digits, we've been doing a lot of celebrating! He started his day with a hall filled with pictures of him at different ages.

Then he ordered waffles for breakfast and ate them while skyping and reading email messages from family and friends.

He also managed to complete about 1/2 of his new Lego set before he left for school.


Nate ordered buckeyes as his treat to bring to school. Many people in Japan do not like peanut butter so we also brought pretzels for those who couldn't or didn't want the buckeyes.

 He celebrated with his class at the exact minute of his birth (thanks to the time difference this took place at 3:13 p.m. here instead of the 1:13 a.m. time in the States!)

The next day he invited  friends to travel to a nearby city called Osaka where they went to Sega Joyopolis.

Matthew Maloney, Nathan, Nathan McCleery, Jay MacNeil and Matthew Park

This was a video game and virtual reality ride arcade. The boys seemed to have a great time. Matt found chaperoning the 5 of them through one of the busiest train stations in Japan a bit of a challenge! They ate at a Yakatori restaurant (fast food Japanese, mostly various types of chicken served on little skewers). Then they came home for cake and ice cream. Laura's friend Jessica also joined in the celebration. Then the boys spent the night.





Sunday afternoon Nate got his big birthday present...a new bike!

Our last birthday event will be this coming Saturday when Nathan, Matt and I are going to go to a Brazilian steak house. Nate is enthralled with the idea of all the meat he can eat!

 I love seeing how happy Nathan is and how well he's doing but I always feel a little twinge in my heart knowing that we'll be moving him again in 18 months. I guess he's learning to be adaptable. I just hope he's equally happy once we move back to the States!

Kobe Fashion Museum

Nate pretending to hold up the "spaceship" building during our first visit to Japan

   
 This week I finally made it to the Kobe Fashion Museum! This museum is located on Rokko Island, where we live, and I pass the building at least 4 times a day. Often I have coffee at the Starbucks located in the adjacent mall, but somehow, I've never actually made it inside. Last week a friend convinced a group of us to go and I'm so glad she did! The museum is small but the fashions inside were very cool and admission was only 500 yen (about $5.20), a true bargain in Japan!

According to it's website, the Kobe Fashion Museum is the first museum in Japan to specialize in fashion. They have fashions from all over the world. The museum is divided into several sections, each focusing on a separate facet of fashion. The areas are the Napoleon Collection, Structure, Color, Materials, Designers and a Chronology of Fashion. Most of the signs are in Japanese but there was enough English to make it interesting.

Part of the Napoleon collection - these are replicas of his royal robes

From the Structure sections

The had a gorgeous collection of fans from all over the world

Example of clothing from the 1990's!

  It also has a library that is even larger than the museum itself. The spaceship looking part of the building is called Orbis hall and is used for lots of different events, many of them fashion related. I can't tell you how many times we've been walking past the building and seen students in all kinds of interesting costumes and other gear. Unfortunately, my surreptitious pictures of them never seem to turn out well.

Next month there is going to be a special exhibit on Kimonos. I'm definitely planning to go back!

Laura's 7th Birthday

Friday, January 14th, 2011 was Laura's 7th birthday. It's hard to believe my baby girl is growing up so fast!

Friday was a school day, so she got up at 7:00 a.m. and we made pancakes for breakfast. During breakfast she Skyped with her grandparents and other family members. She also had several birthday emails and cards to read...she was almost late for school!

We made shortbread cookies shaped like stars for her birthday snack at school.



Since we have a hard time finding some things in Japan, we'd done a little pre-planning while we were in the States at Christmas. We bought a few presents to bring back, as well as birthday napkins with the characters from Tangled (a new movie about Rapunzel, that isn't out yet in Japan) and an edible image topper for her birthday cake.


Laura has been suffering from middle child syndrome a little lately, so we wanted to make sure she got lots of attention on her birthday. However, our kids only get big parties for their 5th, 10th and 16th birthdays so we didn't want to go too overboard. On Saturday we took Laura and three friends (and her siblings) to an indoor play area called USLand. It has lots of video games, pool tables, small rides, trampolines and climbing structures. They had a great time but chaperoning 5 hyper children via 2 different trains to the play place wore Matt and I out! We came back home for cake and ice cream and then Laura's best friend Jessica spent the night.  They insisted on having Skyline chili for dinner (even though Laura doesn't really like it!) However, Jessica is also from Cincinnati and they both love the restaurant!

Despite being a bit sad about missing home, I think she really enjoyed the weekend.

Now we just have to start planning Nathan's 10th birthday celebration for next weekend...