Today we decided to visit Japan (or at least some Japanese culture). Japanese culture is brilliant for kids! Hello Kitty, Pokemon and the Karate Kid… what’s not to like? We had some brilliant ideas from friends too and the list was so long that I think we might have to revisit Japan at some point!
Breakfast
This is the face of a dubious little breakfaster! I had done a little research and breakfast seemed to be eggs, rice and fish in Japan so I made some rice and added a soft boiled egg. It was OK… Freddie ate a lot of his, Penny ate the yoke and the Kiwi and I ate ours. It’s not likely to replace my crunchy nut cornflakes as a lifestyle choice, though and we only had Uncle Ben’s rice so I’m not convinced we were very authentic.
We watched
The Karate Kid! Mr Miyagi is an absolute legend. Sadly Penny got a bit scared of all the fighting (there is quite a lot of fighting) and so we put Peppa Pig on instead. I probably should have tried to find a Japanese cartoon to watch. So this film (and what a film it is) is for the grownups for now.
The Adventure
In the spirit of affordability we downloaded Pokemon Go and went out to hunt Pokemon. It turns out that Formby (the small town we live in) is lacking in Pokemon (perhaps our red squirrels eat them), so we headed into Liverpool and took shelter from the wind in John Lewis. There are a surprising number of fierce Pokemon in John Lewis – be warned!
Lunch
We had booked a Japanese restaurant called Sapporo and it was excellent! I did have a little trepidation (mild panic attack) when we arrived and I realised my children were going to have to sit with other people and thus would have to behave but they were fascinated by the chef and the cooking.
Freddie was especially captivated by the chef and both kids loved the sauteed potatoes which were thrown into their mouths like they were little seals.
The food was really delicious too. We will be going back.
We made
When we got home granny and grandad came round for Miso soup, (more) rice and Origami. Penny turned out to be very good at Origami and we made little boats and bunnies and boxes. Granny is especially skilled at making boats from a pattern she had in a Rupert the Bear book when she was a little girl.
Next time!
We ran out of time for some of our others ideas but here they are encase you fancy trying them:
Karaoke! We have Sing Star for the Play Station somewhere in our garage and we were going to dig it out. But there are bars and restaurants you can go to if you feel like it. You can even hire a karaoke room, www.mboxkaraoke.co.uklooks good if you are local – although I’m not sure I’d consider it sober…
If my kids were a little bit older we definitely would have had a go at making Sushi! You can buy all the stuff in most super markets and then you could eat it for tea. BBC Good Food has an online recipe for sweet sushi based on rice crispie squares which looks really fun if your small people are picky eaters.
And finally both my friend Katie and my mum suggested finding some cherry blossom trees and making something with the blossom. Such a pretty idea but not the best weather this week. I did have a thought that hunting Pokemon in a park filled with blossom trees could be very lovely.
So we feel like a trip back to Japan is in order. There are Hello Kitty’s to be coloured in, sushi to be made and karaoke to be sung.
And next time I think we might visit Yo Sushi in Liverpool One as our treat… although I do fear that the thrill for the kids of taking little plates off the conveyor belt might prove very expensive.
Since we visited Japan we have pretended to visit lot’s of other Asian countries including Thailand and India!
