journal features

a day out with friends

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2010.06.05

Last night, Kenny and I went to the festival at the shrine behind our house. There, we ran into several friends.

They're all parents of small children from the neighbourhood of about Kenny's age. Happily, I was sufficiently able to speak with our friends in my (still very broken) Japanese that I felt comfortable joining them and talking about various things. My vocabulary and grammar are crap, but it's good to be able to get involved.

Couldn't say the same for Kenny, though. He didn't seem to know what to make of the other boys, though he'd seen them all before. It crossed my mind that we've been spending too much time alone on the weekend and not seeing enough of other children. I mean: for months, now.

Sure enough, when we followed through on the plans we made last night, Kenny was reluctant to start palling around with the other kids. In fact, he spent the whole day hanging around his Oka-san and me. We vowed to reverse the trend and get him in front of kids again.

Happily, Yu-kun's dad is essentially a kid as well (like me) and we've agreed that he's going to bring over his boy and his electric plastic rail kit and we'll make a giant combined wooden/plastic model train. For the two two year olds, of course. (e_e)

Here are some pics of the day.