Traffic Safety Day...

I had to go to the yochien this morning for the traffic safety day, the bus picked Ebi-kun up as usual and I made my own way there. When I got there the yard had been set up with pedestrian crossing and traffic lights, some of the older kids were the police officers waving people to stop or cross the road and other older kids were riding their bikes as the 'traffic'.

It all seemed like a bit of a farce, I had to hold Ebi-kuns hand and we crossed the road a couple of times then the kids went back to do what ever they usually do and the moms got ushered to the hall. Where we had a talk about road safety, advising parents to get helmets for their kids on bikes (for those not in Japan, imagine road safety standards of about 20 years ago, that is where Japan is now, slowly getting better but you still see a lot of kids without helmets, not wearing seat belts in the car, nevermind child seats. A woman who used to live near me would often be seen driving, no seat belt, with her 1 year old strapped to her back!) So, we were warned about such things and got given various bits of paper to read at home. They do manage to make the warning information oh so kawaii though....the baddie just cracks me up!

I also noticed that they have refurbished the bird cages and put in a cute area with a tree and table and chairs, if you look at the picture, I was standing on the path and the other 3 sides of the seating area houses the peacocks and swans, I imagine they will use it as a study area, love it!

I managed to escape and drop by at Madi's house, who lives just round the corner, she has had some sad news recently so it was good to see how she was doing and catch up, we ended up going for a nice lunch, so not such a wasted day after all!