Visiting Kai

Hello cutie!

Today we went to visit Yasu and Eriko and their son Kai. We haven't seen him in about 6 months. He is even cuter than ever, and is now 13 months and just getting the hang of walking. He's at the stage where throwing things on the floor and making disasters is fun - and funny for the guests. I was quite surprised that he didn't make shy. We had fun playing with him all day.

There was a big festival in Yasu's house. I went last year to the festival as well. This year we got to hang out with the kids version. Usually you only see adults carrying mikoshi (portable shrines) around, but in their neighbourhood there are 3 things for the kids as well. The youngest ones follow a moving taiko drum around. For kids about 3 or 4 there was a mikoshi on a cart that they could pull with ropes. It was pretty funny because you'd walk 20 meters and then tehre would be a rest break. At every break the kids got a treat of some sort. There was also a miniature mikoshi for kids around 6-9. They also got rest breaks. At the very end of the route everyone got this giant bag of treats as well - it was like Hallowe'en!

After following the drum around and getting some pictures, we went back to Yasu's apartment and ate all of the snacks Kai 'earned' being pushed in his stroller behind the drum. Then we went out again and visited the food stalls for festival food. It was so crowded - and it was rainy all day so it was crowded with umbrellas. Lots of people were running around with bare bums - they were wearing traditional Japanese outfits. Usually, people wear a happi coat, which is like a short robe, that covers the bum (cuz the sarong (? wrap) thing they wear is like a giant thong). Here, however, there were lots of rather nice naked male butts running all over the place.

I got some cute kid pictures that I hope to get up in my photoblog in the next few days, but here's one of Kai in the mean time.