Day 13: Shouwa Park and Kyaraben Class

Today's breakfast and dessert:

I wore the bow that I got at Daiso yesterday:

And helped my host mom put faces on the キャラ弁 she made for the picnic we planned to have this afternoon.

The character's name is ミッフィー (Miffy) and is from a Dutch children's book.

After that, we stopped at the super market.

More huge fruit:

(Yes, those apples and grapefruit are almost the same size.)

Then went to what I think was a food/meals themed children's activity fair at the Tsutaya Bookstore. The bookstore is huge and is kind of like a small mall in and of itself (the same bookstore where I got my map).

I liked this tea display because it has all the main kinds of tea with both their English and Japanese names:

I liked comparing the names. For example, according to this sign Pu'er Tea is called 黒茶（くろちゃ）（kurocha） in Japanese, which directly translates to "Black Tea" in English while black tea is called 紅茶（こうちゃ）（koucha） which directly translates to "Deep red/Crimson Tea" in English.
I feel like the Japanese names are a little more accurate here.

After that, we went to 昭和公園（しょうわこえん）（shouwakoen）= Shouwa Park and had our picnic.

My host mom got us all drinks from a vending machine. I got a banana flavored warm milk drink. It was pretty fantastic:

And we had the melon cup things my host mom got at the Yabusame event for dessert:

I found some four-leaf clovers:

Thirteen of them.

Then actually took a quick nap because I was pretty tired.

After that, my host mom and I went to the キャラ弁 class. I think it must have been a mommy-and-me type class, because it was a bunch of moms and small children. It was a lot of fun though!

We were given all the supplies, and just had to shape, cut, and place the various parts:

The class was held in sort of a shopping center area. On the hour, the face of this clock above us lifted up, and a little metal band played music inside.

Here are some キャラ弁 the teacher of the class made and brought to show us:

Later, we went to my host dad's parents' again for dinner. We ended up having the same kind of fish, and it was a lot easier for me to eat this time which was kind of a cool benchmark. It really doesn't feel like I'm getting any better at chopsticks, but I'm using them at almost every meal so I know I probably am.

Dinner:

Note: I'm not counting Miffy, Charlie Brown, or Snoopy as onigiri.