Oh lord, I am NEVER going to get this blog finished am I? Ah well, I can but try my best.
Tim and I start making decorations for Rhiannon's party. This involves trips to the fabulous Tokyu Hands to buy huge pieces of cardboard to cut out fish and other undersea creatures. An international supermarket called National Azabu has an upper floor selling all kinds of decorations so I invest in several miles of sea-coloured streamers, many packets of balloons and a series of party bag fillers.
Out of the blue, Tim arrived home one day with a 6 foot long inflatable Orca. As you do! We will suspend this from the ceiling of the hall.
We plan a set of activities with the intention of rotating groups of kids around the room. Pin the necklace on Ariel, face-painting, decorating mini-buckets, food, dancing and so on. I create a playlist on my Zen MP3 player and make sure the thing works with the PA system. It does. Goodo!
Everything seems to be going well in this respect. Apart from some people not RSVP-ing. This does irritate me – apart from manners, we need to have their details for the security guards on the gate to the area where the party will be held. I also need to know how many goody bags to make, so I email everyone who hasn't replied thus far and get all but one to reply – most are coming, which is fabulous! I have to assume the person that didn't respond won't be coming.
I have a hair appointment for a recolour. This takes AGES! But well worthwhile. My hair is extremely strong and resists bleach so it takes several attempts to get it light enough to take the cerise colour. But I'm very happy with the result… after four hours!
Rhiannon has joined Rainbows, but it really doesn't suit her at all. In general she just doesn't "get it" and I can't see her staying long, but we were in the waiting list for ages so we'll continue for now. There are a couple of girls who steal from her which required a nice chat to all concerned. This parenting lark is bloody hard work sometimes.
Friday mornings are a slog to get Rhiannon to gymnastics at 7.45 am, but the team who run it are absolutely fantastic and I can recommend them to anyone in Tokyo – it's ICan Gymnastics – run by the extremely charismatic and capable Mr Lee. Sadly the school has no gym equipment so all the kids can do is learn to tumble, which is good in itself, but not worth getting up at silly o'clock for. We look into getting her into other clubs with more equipment.
Saturday is a run-around with Aikido in the morning and a kid's party in the afternoon. While Tim and I have coffee in Starbuck I manage to not put the top on the coffee cup properly after putting in my 16 bags of sugar… a litre of hot coffee all over me. And I'm wearing cream trousers. Lovely.
I'm writing a Tokyo Tales article about something that I decided would be good with a photo of Maneki Neko - the "Beckoning Cat" so arranged these teeny ornaments for a photo that I don't actually recall using! They are about 1.5cm high.
And here is a gratuitous photo of a somewhat larger Raymi!
