Being able to travel off peak travel times is one of the best things about homeschooling. We managed to get ourselves some last minute tickets to Japan in April and were able to take a trip there. Cherry Blossoms were blooming and Sakura Day happened while we were there. We walked on the grounds of the Palace in Ueno Park to see the blossoms falling from the trees. I'd been a sakura skeptic--what could be so interesting about falling cherry blossoms?--but once there I finally understood the beauty, and the loss of that beauty, and the ephemerality of life. The sadness and the joy. We were inside the haiku.
Japanese culture is very different from ours. As a writing and research project, our daughter was assigned the project of taking photos of, and writing an essay about, all the differnt and novel kinds of food she encountered there. We took a few trips to the grocery store, ate at a variety of restaurants, including a ramen place, a shabu-shabu restaurant, a sushi restaurant, a bakery and a yakitori place. Tokyo is full of amazing restaurants.
Through a friend we met a local teenage girl who showed our daughter to all the special animal "cafes" that are all over Tokyo--the Cat Cafe, the Hedgehog Cafe, the Bird Cafe. There is a huge kawaii culture in Japan--the culture of cute! Even the dogs in Japan are cuter than dogs anywhere else as you can see from this beauty we met while walking through the cherry blossoms.
I want to go back next year! our daughter exclaimed. Me too!
