great day in the sunshine
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
Today was the first of the holidays that make up "Golden Week" in Japan. I had to go to Shinjuku to look at photography equipment for one of my new business's projects, so we made a day of going first to the camera equipment shops, then to have lunch (a very rare visit to a restaurant for the whole family) and then out to a kids play park where we spent the afternoon trying to keep Kenny from getting into trouble.
The boy loves to slide down slides, now. He's come a long way from the tiny slide that made him wail, and will now crawl back up the steps of just about any kind of slide he sees. Knowing this, I took him to the top of a very large, broad concrete slide of the sort you'd only see outside of worrywort North America. The polished concrete surface was wide enough for at least half a dozen kids to use at the same time, and was maybe three metres tall.
Since I had in my lap, I couldn't see his response and in any case was too busy trying to stay upright as we shot down the thing. Mari reported that Kenny had an overjoyed look on his face both times that I took him down.