of Step Dads and the Environment...

catchy title no? So first, I spoke to my mom at the weekend as usual, well we skype usually about 4 times a week, anyway my step dad had been rushed into hospital in the night with a possible heart attack, they managed to stabilise him and when I spoke to mom yesterday, she said that he had been eating a Sunday roast for lunch! He has been moved to the cardio unit but they need to wait before they can run the full tests to find out exactly what was wrong. A bit of a scare to say the least.

Yesterday, was a national holiday and we had planned to go to the anti-nuclear rally in Tokyo but Ebi-kun was coming down with a cold (sniffles, coughing and nose bleeds, we are off to see the doc. in a bit) and the last demo had turned violent so I was a bit worried about taking Ebi-kun all the way there, plus is is a long train ride to get there. So instead we went to the Prefecture Environment Museum in Kazo. It is housed in a modern looking building and inside, everything is laid out really well.

It is very much hands on, it wasn't very busy so we got to play on everything. There was a LOT of information and I think Ebi-kun got a bit phased out at times, maybe elementary age children would get more out of it, in fact, I imagine it is one of those places that kids go to on school trips. Below was a small room where you had to answer questions to calculate the carbon footprint for your home.

This is the only thing we had to wait to get on, you have to drive the car around a certain route but be careful not to go too fast or your CO2 emissions get higher. There was also a little movie with a quiz, you put in your answers using the buttons on the arm rest, that was quite funny because there were just the three of us in there. 

Upstairs was a big study area so it would be a good place to take the kids for their summer projects and the such like. We were there for about 2 hours, older  kids may have wanted to stay longer. The place is advertised as having an outdoor park too but I was rather disappointed that the pool was dirty and had plastic bags floating in it, the solar, wind and water energy equipment didn't appear to be working either, so although the inside of the museum was immaculate, the outside was rather shabby, such a shame.

I have joined  Mariah's Playful Spaces e-course, I have been thinking how to re-arrange things a bit better around the home, some areas work well but have got a bit out of hand recently so this is giving me the push to actually do something about it. Little does Ebi-kun know but we will be re-organising the whole of the Montessori/craft room today, when I have finished the course I will share some before and after pics.