Australian party food

My Seattle friend Adrienne Fairhall emailed with a more detailed explanation of Australian birthday delights from the b-day party Arno attended at the Australian embassy.

Remember the fairy bread?



Adrienne says these are basic sprinkles, but fairy bread in her home country would properly be topped with tiny round candies called "hundreds and thousands" or H&T.

Beyond the meat pies and mini sausages, she gave me a name for the pancakes with jam and cream: "party pikelets."

Adrienne: "This is exactly the menu of a hundred parties I went to as a kid."

Potato digging

On Thursday Arno's class had a field trip (literally) to dig Japanese sweet potatoes at a farm in Tokyo. His teacher, Miss Makiko, said many Tokyo schools take young children to do this because they rarely touch real dirt in this concrete city.

We rode in a big bus for more than an hour on city streets to Chofu city in western Tokyo. The sign says something like "Welcome to the sweet potato farm."




The farmer at Nagano farm:



We had a snack and went digging. The farmer roped off three rows of potatoes. The vines were wilted but still intact and, fortunately, the ground was not muddy. This is the "before" shot, before the farmer pulled the vines away:





The kids dug in. I found a shiny, sharp spade for Arno at a "100 yen store," where everything actually costs 105 yen - about 95 cents.

Boy finds sweet potato, brandishes sweet potato.




Arno's three lovely teachers: Miss Makiko, Miss Sharee and Miss Natsumi.




Each kid was allowed to extract a massive daikon radish for 100 yen apiece.



The kids washed their hands without using soap. The farmers laid out four basins, designated for hands that were successively less dirty. The first basin was mud-cloudy, but the water in the fourth basin looked almost drinkable.



Arno poked a caterpillar, had lunch, checked out the farmer's guinea pigs, marched on the fields, dug dirt, squished dirt, threw dirt and fell asleep on my lap as we drove back to school.

It was a relaxing way to parent: no responsibility to make the day a success, no tantrums, no stress, nice chats with other moms.

That night, we steamed the starchy potatoes with butter, and sliced the radish (white strips) into a Japanese stew.

Bewitched

For Halloween in Tokyo, we took a slow, candy-collecting walk through the expat Moto-Azabu neighborhood near Lucinda's school.

In Seattle, people flock to Capitol Hill to trick or treat. In Tokyo, they take taxis to Moto-Azabu.

Around 6pm, we strolled to the Moto-Azabu Place apartment complex, which some jokingly call "Melrose Place." Residents sit at the edge of the cobblestone driveway with bowls of candy.




Many Japanese children wear super-creative or Disney costumes. This girl was a frosted cupcake.



Buzz Lightyear is a cartoon fixture here:



We stopped at houses and apartments near Nishimachi, where the candy lines were long and crowded.

On the walk home, we found a Halloween party in a church called St. Mary. The pews in the chapel were skewed into a zig-zaggy maze to guide children to the altar, where they received a lovely package of candy. (No photos allowed of the chapel, alas.)

A church-sanctioned Halloween? Take that, Pat Robertson!

The WP's man in Tokyo

How often do you see a pirate, Snow White and Superman walking down the street in Tokyo? The Japanese don't really celebrate Halloween, but expats do. We went to a party this weekend and wore our best Seattle costumes.



Our taxi driver thought we were hilarious. Here's a glimpse of my queen costume in the cab.



After the party (which was fun, but not blogworthy), the Washington Post's man in Tokyo hailed a cab to go home.



Blaine decided that his hat fit better upside down, which made me fall over laughing.

Aussie Birthday Party

Arno attended his first preschool birthday party this weekend, and it was held at the Australian Embassy.

The birthday girl was Arno's 3 yr old classmate, Ceinwyn Robens. (Ceinwyn is a Welsh name, and her parents pronounce it "Kyne-win".)



Ceinwyn adores Arno. The moment he walks into the classroom every morning, she scoots over to watch him put away his lunch box and changes his shoes. She also reportedly gets upset when she can't sit next to him at lunch. Such is the preschool crush!

Ceinwyn's mother Anna is the assistant to the Australian ambassador; the Robens (along w/several dozen other families) live in the embassy compound, which has its own lap pool, kiddie pool, squash courts, gym, and a huge underground garage where the kids ride bicycles.



The party was at the kiddie pool. Arno can't swim, but Ceinwyn is a terrific swimmer, so she dove and swam around him.



We learned a bit about Aussie birthday traditions from the menu: meat pies, tiny sausages, pancakes with jam and whipped cream, drinks for the parents.

And fairy bread," which is white bread, smeared with butter and decorated with sprinkles that a party guest said are known as "hundreds and thousands." (Our Seattle-Australian friend Adrienne will have to confirm whether I've gotten that right.)



The party guest:

Tree Climbing Japan

Wednesday was one of our luckiest days in Japan. Lucinda and I went to Hibiya Park for a group playdate with her classmates - and got to climb a huge tree!

This is no wilderness. It's a big park near the Imperial Palace, surrounded by office buildings and packed with businessmen having lunch. But in a small patch of trees, a group called Tree Climbing Japan set up its operation.



Tree Climbing Japan is "dedicated to teaching tree-friendly, safe tree climbing." They bring harnesses, ropes, gloves and helmets - and show people how to hoist themselves into trees in a completely safe, relatively easy way.

On Wednesday, that included four kindergarten girls and me. We paid 100 yen, about 85 cents, for the privilege. (I got a few pictures before my camera battery died.)

This guide roped Lucinda into a harness.



Add helmet.



These are the trees we climbed. You can click the picture for a better look.



Here's a zoom to see the other girls suspended in the trees. The blue hammock is 15-20 feet up. The guides showed us how to climb up the rope by putting one foot into a loop, standing up, pushing the safety knot higher and doing it again.





The girls went up and down the rope twice. Lucinda climbed with complete confidence; she is very strong and didn't use the foot-loop for the last half of the climb. I went up, too, and we sat in the hammock together.

After we came down, the guides told us to pat and thank the trees - only in Japan! We each received this certificate, which says we've made a "Tree Friend." (Click the pic for a closeup.)

Land of Kiddy

Lucinda and I next went to Kiddy Land, a four-story, licensed-toy palace that encapsulates the Japanese fixation with cuteness. The store's motto is "for the human smile."



Choose a character from TV or books or someone's obnoxiously adorable imagination and then explode the boundaries of licensing and marketing - and you have Kiddy Land. The merch is copious and colorful, a bonanza of "Hello Kitty" and lesser-known soft creatures.




The character "Usaru". And bananas with faces.





I thought the "Rody" was just a bouncy horse - wrong!




Pens, notebooks, plush toys, key chains, silverware, chopsticks, lunch boxes, plastic toys, erasers, name labels, coffee cups - whatever you can think of, starring Madeline, the Very Hungry Caterpillar, Gaspard and Lisa, Anpanman, Elmo or unnamed stuffed bears in 20 colors.







I escaped with the 800-yen purchase (about $7) of two Playmobil toys.