The big day....

We had a video chat with my mom first thing and Ebi-kun opened some of his presents, he kept some for when daddy got home (he has been away on business all week). Then after I asked Ebi-kun if he wanted to go to the modern art museum or the National Train Museum, the train museum won, which wasn't much of a surprise since we haven't been for a long time.

They have added some new parts to the museum and changed it around a bit. As Japanese museums go this one is really good, there is a lot of hands on stuff to do and the kids are allowed to get on many of the trains. They also have train simulations, Ebi-kun had a go at being a shinkansen driver (bullet train). It wasn't that busy at the museum but we still had to queue for about 30 minutes to go on this.

OK, random picture number one, you know the Japanese are famous for sleeping anywhere, well these were 'rest seats' not even in the train and yes, everyone was asleep, just cracked me up!

This is one of the new additions, outdoor play area, all the equipment is shinkansen shaped, although the day started rainy it had stopped by the afternoon.

 If you are looking for a good place to wear the kids out (or mothers in this case!) it is a great place to go, climbing in and out of all the trains is hard work! Before they had a couple of carriages inside where you could eat your lunch, you can buy an eki-ben to eat. Eki means station and ben is short for bento so eki-ben is a speciality station bento, many stations have the local speciality food in their eki-ben, for my husband it is one of the treat of going long distance by train. Anyway, now the eating carriages are outside, next to the real train tracks so you see the local trains go past as you eat - very exciting if you are a train spotter or small boy! Inside they have a steam train on a turntable and twice a day it goes round and they blow the whistle, the kids love it!

 I was quite taken with the stained glass windows....

 and this is the original artwork, taken at a funny angle because I was trying to avoid the glare.

 Random picture number two... for lonely train drivers?

Another new addition was the science room where you could try your hand at all kinds of experiments, took me back to my physics lessons at school.

After spending most of the day at the museum I asked Ebi-kun where he wanted to go for dinner and he opted for the purple cafe, as we used to call it but it has had a make-over and is now the cream cafe.  This was a favourite haunt of Kate and mine when she was living over here, we used to meet up when Ebi-kun was a baby, plonk him down on the sofa and have a good natter, I am glad he picked here for dinner! happy memories.

We had spaghetti for the main course then he picked mont blanc (sweet chestnut) cake for dessert. Lovely way to end the day. Daddy made it back in the wee hours so we will be having birthday mark II today!