Hanami and Easter Egg Hunting...

 I had an absolute manic weekend, Saturday was last minute getting things ready for school, discovering that I had another 3 items to make and not having enough of the fabric was one of the panics! Somehow got all through that and finished off the order I have been working on just in time to organise things for the egg hunt. The playgroup always has an egg hunt on Easter Sunday.

The weather was beautiful and the cherry blossoms out in full force which meant we would have to battle for a picnic spot with all the locals! Since I usually organise the egg hunt we arrived super early and spread all our belongings out in the widest possible area. We have found that hanging bunting from tree to tree also helps to stake our claim on the little patch on land for the day.

staking out the picnic spot before everyone else arrived

obligatory cherry blossom picture

 I made a Wally egg and had him as a special prize, he even had his own wanted poster! I hid him rather too well so ended up having to give clues.

And the hunt is on... we had 17 kids this year, I think. Of course we always get a couple of the locals wandering up and discovering odd coloured eggs in the bushes and we have to go and tell them to put them back at least we didn't have any crows to battle this year. The kids are only allowed to pick up their own eggs, one old lady was trying to help and was trying to give an egg to one of the kids but he was refusing to take it because it wasn't his, of course this wasn't explained to her so she looked rather baffled.

the hunter and the hunted

Once the egg hunt was done we had lunch. We do pot luck (everyone brings a dish to share) so we never know what kind of lunch it will be! We also had some new families join, the weather was perfect and the company was great, it was a really lovely day.

Jennifer's beautiful cookies

After lunch I had organised a scavenger hunt, as the group is for bilingual kids, it is good to do something where they have to actually use their English. As it turned out we had one confident reader/writer in each team. We had been to the same park a couple of weeks earlier so I had taken photos and now there are bigger kids in the group I incorporated the whole park - lots of running! The scavenger hunt seemed to be a big hit, I was a bit worried I had made it too difficult but apart from a sign that had fallen down they managed to do everything OK.

We has a dad's team too but they seemed to find beer on their scavenger hunt! Must remind myself to join their team in future events.

The kids claimed their prizes, real genuine Easter Bunny Poop and then spent the rest of the time playing, football mostly!

It was a great day, well worth the time it took me to organise the hunt and stuff but I admit by the time we got home I was exhausted! Today is Ebi-kun's entrance ceremony so we need to get suited and booted a bit later on, first we have to go to city hall and up date my alien status or something. There are new rules coming into effect in the summer for foreigners living in Japan so I have to make sure everything is in order.