This weekend was the first one neither girl was sick in the past few, so with our connection to the YouTubes down, we needed to entertain them outdoors. (Plus, with only two months to go in our stay in Japan, we've resolved to tire ourselves out on the weekends taking the girls to various places in Fukuoka.) So we went to the shore each day--yesterday, to the beach by Fukuoka Tower, and today, to the Hakata Wharf to visit the Doulos.
At Fukuoka Tower, we stayed all day with several other Japanese moms married to foreigners, mostly by these tiny fountains that you can walk into, mostly because the kids (all pre-schoolers and toddlers) loved them so much. We had a great time, but there was one mini-crisis. The tsuma and another mom had to spring into action late in the afternoon because they were sure a pair of middle-aged Chinese tourists were taking shots of their girls. After taking shots of their own of the guys, they then asked them if they could see the pictures they had taken and deleted the ones with the girls in them. Mixed kids get really exoticized in Japan and apparently in China, as well, even sansai onnanoko, so better safe than sorry. Me, I didn't even notice anything amiss in the first place. It didn't ruin the day for us, but it sure made us think about getting onechan the same kind of surfer-style swimsuit we got for imoto in Hawaii.
At Hakata Wharf, which we spent as much time walking to and from as at, we quickly came to realize the 1914-era ex-luxury cruiser we were visiting was basically yet another Christianity vector. If the Doulos ever happened to pull a Titanic, the world's largest ocean-worthy supply of Bibles and Christian inspirational and self-help literature would be lost. Even though it was fun to meet the twentysomethings from all over the world who are in the middle of their two-year tour of the western Pacific, the whole time I was on board I was thinking, "This is how L. Bob Rife's Raft from Snow Crash got started." If anyone started speaking in tongues, we would have been so out of there, the mood I was in. I was so weirded out, I talked the tsuma out of taking a tour of the ship. In any case, we were so exhausted that we could barely make it through the supermarket on the way home.
We missed the Chukyo Open on tv, where Momoko Ueda was trying to deny Mi Jeong Jeon her fourth consecutive JLPGA win, but we did get to see the 15-year-old Ryo Ishikawa par the last hole for a 66 that put him at -12 in this week's JPGA event, giving him a decent chance to become the youngest amateur in the world to win a pro event. Both of Ai-chan's golfing brothers were chasing him, but his nearest competitor was one shot off with the 596-yard par-5 18th left to play. Of course, that's when Japanese tv decided it was time for the news, so we still don't know what happened. Onechan's watching Chibi Maruko-chan and Sazae-san while I write this and rescue imoto from the more dangerous moments in her career in climbing on the furniture (tsuma's trying to head off a migraine by taking a nap).
So it's been a fantastic weekend, so I'll sign off and go back to entertaining the girls and doing laundry full-time. Hope your weekend involved fun away from the computer!
[Update: Ishikawa did it! (That is, no one caught him!)]
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