IQ tests, Cauldrons, Shopping and Books..

Not the catchiest title I'm sure! Yesterday Ebi-kun had the day off so daddy-ebi took the morning off so that we could take Ebi-kun for his pre-school IQ test and we thought he had a health check too but apparently not. We also needed to go to city hall to get some papers registered to do with the land and we FINALLY got our proper address - we have only been here 4 years! I'm not going to try and explain why because I don't really understand myself. We came home, put another layer on the cauldron had lunch then went shopping to get daddy-ebi a birthday present.
Ebi-kun is not a fan of shopping so I suggested that he took some money with him (Baa-chan recently gave him some to buy books with), the deal was that we got daddy's present and then we would go and buy a book and then go to Starbucks for a drink and re-charge. Cunning plan worked! I didn't know where the books were in the book shop, he was after a specific maze book so he asked a clerk, she showed us some but they were not the right ones and then she took us to another area and we found the right books. They were wrapped in plastic so the clerk unwrapped the one he wanted to look at then went off and came back with a little chair for him to sit on so he could sit and read through it, got to love the book stores here!

He really wanted another of these maze books, I think this is the third or fourth one he has, they all have different themes, this one is famous legends.

I must admit, I like these books too, you can spend hours pouring over the pages looking at all the details, there are all kinds of hidden pictures and messages, a big maze and small maze to complete then there is a special maze the jumps from page to page, like the Where's Wally books but so much better. This is the Robin Hood page if you look hard you can see animals shapes in the paths, hidden pumpkins, elves and sprites....

So, after we had a re-charge we finished off the shopping then popped into Book Off on the way home, we were in their ages, Ebi-kun kept pulling more and more books off the shelves to read, he eventually settled on two. The first is about Japanese ghosts, the kids decided to set up a haunted house but of course the house is already haunted by three famous ghosts, the faceless woman, the lantern and the umbrella.

This looks SO Japanese to me, the artwork, the kids, the room decor and of course the weird ghosts. It is a cute, fun book, Ebi-kun thought the story was very funny.

The last one is a riddle book which kept him quiet on the train home! Book Off used to be much cheaper, generally the books were ¥105 but in recent years they have increased the prices so now most of the books are half the RRP which isn't too bad as long as they are in good condition. I have also managed to drop on some good English books at times although that is rather hit and miss, they do still have a ¥105 section but it tends to be full of Anpanman, Pokemon and the such like.