The kids have been very lazy since we got back from the States. I've tried to interest them in various activities, but I haven't gotten a nibble. I think it's partly because of the heat and humidity. I thought we'd be prepared for it after all the years we've lived in Houston, but there is a key difference: we don't walk anywhere in Houston when it's this hot. (It's a bit of an exaggeration to say we don't walk anywhere, but not much.) We generally hop in our cars, which are right outside, drive to where we're going, park in a big parking lot close by, and walk into a blast of air conditioning. Here in Tokyo, not so much. First of all, we hardly ever drive. It's usually more of a hassle than it's worth. So instead, we take the train. We walk to the train, have a barely-air-conditioned ride, and then walk to our destination. You get hot!
Today, though, I decided the kids and I were doing something. They had their first official piano lesson in the morning, we had lunch, and then we headed out. In my Tokyo guidebook, I found two small museums just north of Yoyogi Park, so not far from us. One was the Bunka Gakuen Costume Museum and the other was the Japanese Sword Museum. We walked to the train station, took the train, then walked to the costume museum, so yes, we were plenty hot by the time we arrived, especially since we had a wee bit of trouble finding the costume museum.
The costume museum did not quite match the description in my guidebook. According to the guidebook, clothing from Africa, the Middle East, China, India, Western countries, and Japan are exhibited. Well, I guess they didn't mean all at once. We arrived and paid for our admission (not too bad, 500 yen for me and 200 yen for the kids) and were directed upstairs to Gallery 1. Pictures were not allowed, so I don't have any to share, but Gallery 1 was a very large room with clothing items from several different countries in Africa. There were also a few displays where touching was allowed. Once the kids and I had worked our way through the gallery, we looked for a way to the next gallery. There were four doors in the room, including the one through which we entered, but none seemed to go on to another gallery. Finally, we headed back down and noticed Gallery 2 across from the admission desk. It was a smaller room but still had several interesting costumes from Africa. But what about Gallery 3? Not seeing one, we headed to the admissions desk to ask. The person working did not have much English, and my Japanese is currently quite pathetic, but I think we managed to understand each other. It appears that there are only two galleries and that they rotate the exhibits. We happened to come when they were displaying African costumes. Not quite what we were expecting, but still, we enjoyed it.
From the costume museum we walked to the sword museum. On the first floor was a display on how the swords were produced, though we didn't notice this until we had come back downstairs. On the second floor was where the swords themselves were exhibited. We paid our admission fee here (600 yen for me, free (!) for the kids). Again, no pictures were allowed, but the three of us admired all the swords, many dating back several hundred years. There wasn't much English in the displays, but they had English handouts for us on sword construction and vocabulary.
After our museum time, we headed to the train (by a slightly circuitous route - not intentional), rode to our station, and walked home. Overall, we probably spent more than an hour walking outside. Yes, it's hot here!
One unfortunate piece of news today: I got an email from ASIJ telling me that the middle school orientation on Monday was mandatory for both new and returning students. I had assumed it was only for the new students, and this email was the first time I had heard otherwise. The news was unfortunate because I had made dentist appointments for both Greer and Cooper that day. We had also just found out the previous night that the elementary school orientation on Friday was not only for the new students, but returning students were welcome to meet their teachers. Oh, well. I guess poor communication is a universal problem.
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