Just Me and The Boy....

Last Friday was Ebi-kun's school foundation day so it was a holiday for the kids (and presumably the teachers too), so I decided we should have a trip out together, it is a long time since we have had just a mommy and boy day. I had considered going to Ueno zoo but I haven't been for about 12 years , I asked around and so many people said it was pretty awful, I had to come up with a plan B. I am really NOT a fan of bad zoos, I hate seeing animals in tiny concrete cages - but I will save that rant for another day!

I decided instead, that we would take a trip to Odaiba, it is quite a train journey but at least we only have to change trains once. Odaiba is actually a man built island in Tokyo Bay and I must admit that more than once I thought "If there is an earthquake followed by a tsunami, we are buggered!" But there wasn't, so that was OK.

Although it was really windy and not really beach weather, we headed down to the beach anyway, it was some reminiscent of beach holidays in the UK when I was a kid. Ebi-kun was excited to find sea shells, of course we ended up bring a bag of them home, I'm not sure what he plans to do with them yet.

We discovered a beautiful pinkish jellyfish, it was dinner plate size too.

Ebi-kun tried to capture a picture of a sea gull in flight...

We then headed to the Aqua City Building which has a movie theatre and lots of shops plus the Sony Experience place we planned to visit. We had taken a bento with us and find a nice spot inside over looking the bay to have lunch.

Then it was off to Sony ExploraScience, we spent about 2 hours in there and with it being a school day it was virtually empty, I think the staff thought we were tourists because they were trying to explain everything in English. Even when Ebi-kun asked questions in Japanese they still tried to answer in English.

It is cheap to get in, ¥500 for adults and ¥300 for kids and lots of hands on fun to be had. There is some English explanation but very basic, I studied a lot of this sort of thing at uni, so I had to dust off the cobwebs and try and explain it to Ebi-kun where I could. I think younger kids would just have fun playing with all the lights and sounds.

They have a 3D cinema too so we sat through a couple of the films being shown and because it was empty we could have as much time on each thing as we liked, which was just as well since Ebi-kun wanted to try out all the characters for this one below. It monitors your body then makes the animation move in the same way as your body - highly amusing! Although it was smaller than I expected and doesn't really justify a whole day trip, it was a lot of fun and we both enjoyed it. The Lego Discovery place is in the next building so you could make a whole day of it and do both.

After we had tried everything out at least once we left and finished off with a crepe treat, yum. It was a lovely day out and of course we prefer it when daddy is with us but sometimes it is nice to have the boy all to myself!

What did you get up to at the weekend?