Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise, National Children's Castle, Gotemba Premium Outlets

This is one of the rare Sundays where I have a quiet afternoon to myself, enjoying a cup of coffee and blogging on my laptop. The kids are asleep and papa is out looking for his Warhammer figurines at Jimbocho.

Thursday and Friday was a mid-term school break for Justin so papa took leave for us to travel out of Tokyo. It was Thursday to Yokohama Sea Paradise, Friday to National Children's Castle and Saturday to Gotemba Premium Outlet. Today is stay-at-home day, and probably soccer time when the kids wake up.

Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise

We arrived Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise at 1:45pm. The Aqua Show featured performances by seals, dolphins, walrus, belugas (white whales) and penguins. After that we visited the main museum and undersea viewing tunnel. It was absolutely breathtaking, we could see the fishes close-up as we were only surrounded by a glass panel. Giant sting rays, sharks, shoal of sardines and other fishes swam in the huge aquarium.

A picture paints a thousand words - now I can explain to them the term "packed like sardines". The silvery Japanese sardines (Sardinops melanostictus) swims together to minimise the chances of being eaten by sharks, dolphins and other predatory fishes.

Throughout the rest of the journey we saw playful penguins swimming, sea otter feeding, sleepy polar bear, sea turtles and many species of fishes. Justin's favourite was Nemo the clown fish, which he happily snapped a photo with them. Jonathan was more engrossed in frogs because he recently read a book on them. I saw my favourite Beluga (white whale) at Dophin Fantasy. The beluga seems so friendly and mild.

Overall, we had a great day of fun.


National Children's Castle










Friday was a rainy day so our plans for Tama Zoo was scrapped. We decided to head for National Children's Castle. There are many things to explore like the fine arts studio where kids can do clay-making and painting, music lobby and video library. The kids spent most of the time in the playground and games area.


Gotemba Premium Outlet

We started our journey at 11am on Saturday, targeting to reach our destination by 12:30pm. Unfortunately, there was an accident on the highway and we were stuck in a massive jam. The slow crawl took us 80 minutes to move 13km before we reached the scene of the accident. There were only 2 cars involved in the crash, the cars were not badly damaged. Immediately after that, the cars started to move faster and traffic was smooth again. The vehicles were already towed to the side lanes - no reason for any hold back of traffic. So who was the main culprit? Every other curious driver spending a few seconds to see what was going on!!

Outside Coach outlet

Jonathan with Mommy

Kids having a break

Anyway we were so glad we arrived at the shopping outlet that we completly forgot about the incident thereafter. The kids were pretty accommodating following us around. The only shop that was of interest to them was LegoBricks. There was also a children's playground between the West and East wing where they played for awhile.

A Perfect Day Out

With temperatures reaching a high of 18 degrees celsius, it was just the day to enjoy some outdoor sunshine. The brief respite from cold weather will last for another day, after which temperatures will fall again to a low of 3 degrees celsius.

Today we headed to Yoyogi Park for the kids to cycle. Rental charges are much cheaper than Singapore's East Coast Park - 200 yen for kid's bicycle, 100 yen for toddler bicycle. The bicycle was a little big for Jon to ride alone so I pushed him while he manoeuvered around. Papa taught Justin how to cycle. During the process Justin fell and tore his pants when he hit the ground on his knees. He still keeps going off balance - part and parcel of learning how to ride the bicycle. Isn't it strange that you only learn how to balance and ride a bicylce after you have had a big fall? That was how I learnt anyway.


After 45 minutes, they kids became tired and we stopped for a rest. I sat at the bench while the kids and papa started to play soccer. The weather was really nice and warm. Lots of people around - brisk walking, jogging, people bringing their dogs for a walk, playing frisbee, cycling, families with young kids and babies in prams, etc. I was in a completely relaxed mood.

Jon having a break

We were going to have lunch elsewhere but decided to have lunch in the park instead. The kids seemed as if they wanted to have more fun outdoors.


Here's another picture of Jonathan standing on a tree stump. (Current mood: Happy!!)

Update on the boys

It's been awhile since I last updated my blog on how the kids are doing. How fast they have grown - Jon was just a little baby cuddling in my arms and now he has grown so tall.

Jonathan at 2 yrs 4 mths : -

- A very well mannered kid. He accidentally hit me the other day and I instinctively said, "Ouch!" Before I could say anything else, he said "(S)Orry mummy!" looking very apologetic.

- Jon is still mastering pronounciations like "S"s and "F"s. This was the same for Justin. I remember Justin telling his teacher "I want weet, I want weet" and I only figured out later that he wanted sweets.

- Jon has been fixing jigsaw puzzles recently. He absolutely loves them and always insists on completing 2 Thomas puzzles at a time. He mixes both up and puts them back again. After finishing the 6 Thomas puzzles he still wants to fix them "again".

Since I do not intend to send Jon to school yet, I have started to teach him alphabets at home.

I managed to find a library which has children's English books. More choices for bedtime stories (*Smiles*). Chinese books are lacking here though. I will have to stock up more books when I go back to Singapore.



Justin at 5 yrs 6 mths : -

As kids grow bigger, they will spend more time learning and writing. Being in K2 now, he has English homework everyday and spelling test on Fridays. Getting him to sit down to do his homework can be a challenge at times. Especially after a long day of school, a light snack ad shower would take him to about 4:30pm. Then another half an hour play before he starts his school homework.

I am now trying out a new motivation system for Justin. This is how it works:

Each day I have a list of things for him to do (e.g. brush teeth, breakfast, change on his own, do homework, etc). When he completes all the things on the list, he gets 10 red beans. The red beans are collected in a jar and when the jar is full, he gets any reasonable present he chooses. If he misbehaves, eg. shows Jon something which he shouldn't be doing, one bean will be taken out from the jar.

Beans in the jar - Day 3

I have also set up a "Spelling Box" for him and put all the spelling words that he has learnt in previous weeks into the box. This acts as a revision, for him to to remember how to spell the words even after his tests. He gets one bean for every word spelt correctly. He has been pretty excited over the spelling box because he gets to pick the words himself. He always asks me to test him on the spelling and we have been practising it every morning before school.

Let's hope this is one way to motivate him to be a well-behaved and responsible boy.

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On another note, Justin is very serious when it comes to reading. Sometimes I see him sitting quietly reading his My Complete Thomas Story Library and Thomas the Tank Engine-The New Collection books. His school teacher commented the other day that his reading is advanced for his grade. (*Smiles*) Now to focus on other areas. (*Wink*)