{"id":23280,"date":"2007-12-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-17T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.takoyaki.org\/blog\/2007\/12\/17\/japan-trip-dec-17-kindergarten-and-pokmon\/"},"modified":"2007-12-17T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-17T06:00:00","slug":"japan-trip-dec-17-kindergarten-and-pokmon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.takoyaki.org\/blog\/2007\/12\/17\/japan-trip-dec-17-kindergarten-and-pokmon\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan Trip &#8211; Dec 17 &#8220;Kindergarten and Pok&#233;mon&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We got up at 7am this morning and ate a nice breakfast at home of tamago-yaki (scrambled egg), sausage, and more maki-zushi. Then we were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/2123010959\/in\/set-72157603514968515\/\">out the door at 7:50am<\/a> and headed for Tsukamoto station, which would take us five stops thru Osaka to Suita, to meet Mariko&#8217;s friend and her son. Bay and Koa would be spending the next few hours attending a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/2123012827\/in\/set-72157603514968515\/\">Japanese kindergarten<\/a>. A quick cab ride to the campus, and the boys were busy in class. The only think I knew about Japanese kindergarten was what I saw in the dorama &#8220;At Home Dad&#8221;. This kindergarten was exactly like that show. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/2123014483\/in\/set-72157603514968515\/\">teachers all wore the same kind of aprons<\/a>, and they <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/2123020315\/in\/set-72157603514968515\/\">played songs on the piano<\/a> during songtime. The boys did really good in their new class! Bay&#8217;s class took a little <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/2123021305\/in\/set-72157603514968515\/\">walking trip to the post-box<\/a> about a half-mile away. When we got there, the postman was there, picking up the mail in his mail-truck. I thought that it was pretty cool that they arranged to have him there. After the kids <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/2123799766\/in\/set-72157603514968515\/\">sent their postcards<\/a>, they marched off back to class and finished up the day at around noon.<\/p>\n<p>We were all pretty hungry by then, so we went to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/2123801172\/in\/set-72157603514968515\/\">Kobeya<\/a>, which is a restaurant famous for their fresh bread. You order a meal off the regular menu, but they also come by every few minutes with baskets of assorted breads to choose from. It&#8217;s all-you-can-eat bread, so we went a little crazy. I don&#8217;t really care for raisin bread, but Kobeya&#8217;s is really oishi. We also had milk-bread, orange bread, walnut bread, but the best was the cheese bread. My entree was a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/2123804606\/in\/set-72157603514968515\/\">combo set of hamburger steak, whitefish, ebi-furai<\/a> (fried shrimp, and potatoes. It was yummy. The kids got their kid&#8217;s meals, which was like mine, but no whitefish. Instead they had <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/2123803070\/in\/set-72157603514968515\/\">omuraisu (egg omelette and rice), fries, spaghetti, and hot dog<\/a>. Plus a little Japanese flag, which was neat. The ladies ate some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/2123029675\/in\/set-72157603514968515\/\">pasta, which was also delicious<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>While we were eating, Mariko&#8217;s friend showed me <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/2123027845\/in\/set-72157603514968515\/\">her keitai, which had a tv on it<\/a>. It was pretty cool and amazing! I am hoping to see a bunch of cool electronics while here, and this was a great start.<\/p>\n<p>After lunch, Mariko&#8217;s friend suggested we <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/2123805630\/in\/set-72157603514968515\/\">visit the Pok&#233;mon center<\/a>, and of course the kids were in agreement that we should go. The center was pretty cool. It was basically a big store filled with anything pok&#233;mon related you can imagine. There were these <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/2123030611\/in\/set-72157603514968515\/\">big video games where you put tokens on a gameboard<\/a>, and the pok&#233;mon on the screen would battle. I had no idea what was going on, but the kids certainly enjoyed it. Also, Bay and Mariko learned how the proper way to play the pok&#233;mon card game, from an official pok&#233;mon trainer. It was pretty neat, I only wish I could understand!<\/p>\n<p>When we left the Pok&#233;mon center, we were getting tired, so we decided to just head home via train. But on the way, Koa said he wanted ice-cream and Bay said he was a little hungry, so we stopped at a little cafe in the underground mall below Osaka station. Bay had <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/2123031695\/in\/set-72157603514968515\/\">some spaghetti<\/a> and Koa had some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/2123805930\/in\/set-72157603514968515\/\">chocolate chip ice cream on corn flakes<\/a>. Mariko enjoyed an ice coffee, and I just had a few glasses of water. I was so thirsty! It must have been all that bread I ate at lunch.<\/p>\n<p>We arrived home after that and Bay and I took a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/2126035517\/in\/set-72157603514968515\/\">hot bath together<\/a>. It was so relaxing! I love Japanese ofuro (baths)! It was the perfect way to end a long day.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/barron\/sets\/72157603514968515\/\">View the photo set here!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We got up at 7am this morning and ate a nice breakfast at home of tamago-yaki (scrambled egg), sausage, and more maki-zushi. Then we were out the door at 7:50am and headed for Tsukamoto station, which would take us five stops thru Osaka to Suita, to meet Mariko&#8217;s friend and her son. Bay and Koa &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.takoyaki.org\/blog\/2007\/12\/17\/japan-trip-dec-17-kindergarten-and-pokmon\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Japan Trip &#8211; Dec 17 &#8220;Kindergarten and Pok&#233;mon&#8221;<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Fk3x-63u","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.takoyaki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.takoyaki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.takoyaki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.takoyaki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.takoyaki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.takoyaki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.takoyaki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.takoyaki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.takoyaki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}