Easter Eggs

We always enjoyed the annual Easter egg hunt in Seattle's Volunteer Park, and now we've found a suitable substitute in Tokyo's Komaba Park.

A mother with 3 children at the American School in Japan (ASIJ), aided by mothers at the British School of Tokyo (BST) and other schools, collects plastic eggs + candy from about three dozen expat families and hides them in Komaba Koen, where we've been before. (Last year, there were 120 kids, but this year's crowd was trimmed by Spring Break travels.)

The egg hunt was held this morning at 11 a.m. in the mild woods near the playground. Here's the crowd listening to Jane Walshe, the organizing mum. She recruited the elementary-age Easter Bunny (top shot); last year, another mom told me, all the dads were drooling over a sexy young-woman bunny.


Arno joined a handful of little kids in an easier hunt and cleaned up in the egg dept. He and Lucinda scoped out the territory and he went to it.



Lucinda searched with the 4+ crowd, including some very speedy 8 yr olds. But the 10-egg limit left enough for everyone.


The kids assessed their loot.


This event was a great reminder about Tokyo's small-town expat world. We saw five families I've met thru completely different avenues, including Nicole Piasecki and Peter Heymann (friends from Seattle), one of Arno's classmates at Willowbrook, a former Willowbrook family, and Blaine's Newsweek colleague (Christian Caryl and his family, who invited us).

While we ate our picnic lunch, the children were entertained by Natasha Caryl's father, who'd just arrived from Kazakhstan and blew up long balloons that the kids released to make a screaming-fizzing noise. The park is very open and the kids didn't need much supervision, always a plus.

We strolled back to the train station, short ride to Shibuya, and then the bus home. The kids are very happy about the day; we'll do it again next year and can invite our Nishimachi and Willowbrook friends, too.