Kinugasa park Cherry blossom festival and playground - March 27

For our friday field trip this week we headed out to Kinugasa park where the first day of the cherry blossom festival was beginning.  It was a long walk up the hill to the park.  When we arrived they were doing a ceremony for the cherry blossom festival and they asked us to join in the dancing.  Jamie and Misty (with Hailey) joined in and I grabbed a few quick photos (not wanting to offend anyone else).  It was pretty neat.  After a bit we went off in search of the playground in the same park.  The kids played here for some time and then we headed back towards the train station in search of another playground that I had seen on google maps.  It was a fairly short outing for a Friday trip, but since we were planning a very long trip on Saturday I didn't want to tire the kids out.

Some sort of line dancing!

There were lots of wooden sculptures throughout the park

The kids really enjoyed this extra large spiral net that they had to crawl through 

At the bottom you could stand up and look out

Even Tristan went all the way through!

They had a net bridge at the other part of the playground

Kannonzaki park - March 22nd

We returned to Kannonzaki park with Chad to show him the awesome rollerslide and just spend another day lazing about a park with a picnic lunch.

We ate lunch inside the cabin shelter they have.

It was such a nice sunny day!

The awesome roller slide.  Jamie took a great video of himself on it with the selfie stick.

Tristan plays on the pirate ship

We stop at the lookout point on our way to the other playground

Misty took our portrait for us

photo-bombed by Hailey!

Near the other playground there is a large field and some gardens and these very unique scarecrows

How can you have a Japanese scarecrow without it the peace sign?

kowai or kawaii?  (scary or cute? - both words sound similar in Japanese)

I thought this one was interesting.

 At the next playground, Chad gave the kids some climbing lessons on the climbing wall.

little Chad is doing quite well

Abby really got into it too!

Then it was time for  some bouncing on the net

I love Jamie's face here as he's getting bounced.

Tristan has his eyes closed

Wow - feet above his head!

Who's not surprised by this?

Chad wanted his own standing stone picture of me.  He's just lucky I'm not in the 18th century :)

Another great viewpoint as we head back to the bus stop.

Tokyo parks - Nikoniko and Robot playground (March 20)

Friday field trip day to Tokyo.  Our first stop was a park that had an entrance fee to get in but it was all fenced in and there were nice tables and chairs to have lunch at.  There was a large slide, a zip line, a large playground structure with a small roller slide, a sandbox and several other things to play on.  We stayed here for 2-3 hours.

Our next stop was in Roppongi at a playground that everyone calls Robot Park.  The pictures on the internet make it look great but in person it was actually quite small with no benches and very crowded.  We stayed for about an hour and then went on home.  I guess it was one more thing to check off the list and at least say we tried it out.

Taura Ume (plum) blossoms - March 15

The Ume (pronounced oo-may) blossoms were already starting to fall by the time we made it back to the plum grove in Taura.  Chad had to work the whole weekend so he didn't meet up with us until right before the sun went down.  The kids played on one of their favorite playgrounds and I met up with a few other people that Chad works with and hung out on the grass.