Children's Day

We celebrated another Tango no Sekku, or Children's Day, here this May. The Japanese holiday is celebrated for a few weeks by hanging koinobari fish banners around town. We found this large one flying at one of our favorite parks in town. Some banners get even larger than that! The carp fish is celebrated at children's day because it is thought of as a very strong fish that swims upstream. Japanese parents hope their sons also are strong and healthy like the carp. We hung some koinobari at our house, too. You're supposed to have a fish for each child in the home and the color and size signify their birth order. I dropped the ball and only had two fish, but will hunt down another for next year. Luckily, Archie wasn't too offended!

The base held a children's day event again this year. The samurai statue behind the boys is supposed to symbolize strength and bravery that the boys should strive for. Last year, only Wilson got to dress up at the event so this year we were excited to get all three boys in on the fun. Leo loved getting in the samurai outfit and was highly covetous of the sword they gave Wilson to pose with.

When it was his turn, Leo was ready and struck a very fierce pose.

Archie opted for a little friendlier warrior look.

The boys had a few vacation days from school and came home with koi bags that they decorated. Their sensei filled the bags with toys and treats for the boys to celebrate with during Golden Week.

 For Golden Week, a celebration that goes along with Children's Day, most of the country has more than a week off of work. It is great time of year for weather in Japan and many people travel during the week. Around us, pottery making is very famous so there are a few towns that shut down and have street fairs with their pottery. There are usually some really good deals. A friend and I went to Arita for an afternoon. This was my first year going and I thought I would spend a few hours there. After six hours, I was overwhelmed and exhausted and had only bought a few small things. Next year, I will for sure be coming home with some nice pottery!

Happy Children's Day and Golden Week!

Wilson's 5!

Hard to believe this big guy is 5 now, but it's true!

Grandma sent all the party supplies so he could have his Star Wars birthday. Here are the boys checking out the cool party stuff. Wilson was excited to decorate and set up his own cupcakes to make a light saber. 

Happy birthday, Wilson!

Shoji

One of our favorite rooms in this house is our tatami room with rice paper windows. In most newer Japanese homes, there are mostly modern features but still a few traditional tatami rooms. These rooms are usually furnished pretty sparingly with ceremonial items and art. They are considered formal rooms and kept very nice. Our big tatami room is off of our living room and since we don't have many ceremonial or artsy items to display, we've made ours into a playroom for the kids. While this works perfectly for our family, we've realized that the rice paper window coverings, or shoji, are not meant to be used in close proximity to a young boy... or three of them!

Here are some boys playing nice and calmly in our beautiful tatami room.

Unfortunately for the windows, this isn't always the scene! While I didn't capture a picture of the windows during or after the massacre, let's just say Leo the very fierce ninja won.

The result wasn't pretty for our lovely shoji.

After a short google search, I discovered that rice paper windows get ripped all the time. Most Japanese homeowners replace there shoji once a year around New Years so they will be fresh for the beginning of a new year. If you're not wanting to replace the whole screen, there are shoji stickers that can patch the holes. They come in different shapes, and I chose the sakura, or cherry blossom, shaped ones.

The stickers did cover the rip, but they didn't look as good as I thought they might.

After another quick google search, I found out that replacing the shoji isn't very difficult. I was a little nervous to tackle the project on my own, so I had a Japanese friend come over to help me. There were rips in four of our six window panels in the room, so it was quite the job. We found all the materials at our trusty O store for less that 2000 yen or about 20 dollars.

Our first step was taking the wooden panel off.

The glue used on shoji is water based, so we sprayed the paper with water to dissolve it.

After a few minutes, we pulled the rice paper off of the panel.

Then we cleaned off the remaining glue and let the panel dry off for about ten minutes.

Next, we applied some new water based glue to every part of the wood panel,

rolled the new rice paper over the glue,

and trimmed off the excess paper.

 After about 20 minutes to make sure all the glue was dry...

Banzai! The beautiful shoji windows were back. The whole process took about three hours total to complete. It was a lot of fun learning about it and replacing the rice paper. Best of all, we had our tatami room looking good again.

You will never believe what happened the very next day.

I'll give you a hint...