Mother's Day and a Private Bath...

This is really a convoluted way of reminding myself. I'm terrible with remembering important dates and celebrations. My wife is an amazing mom, and she works very hard to give our kids a great childhood. Actually, we figure that with the money they'll save on therapy they can take care of us in our old age. Ok, seriously, we have a public "ofuro" (bath house) in our town that is pretty new and really nice. I was thinking of taking my wife to a nice restaurant, but we couldn't find a baby sitter for tomorrow. Instead, maybe a better gift is for me to watch the kids for a couple of hours and send her to the bath house. For those who don't know, taking a bath in an Onsen (hot spring bath house) or Ofuro (regular bath house) is the traditional way to escape from the stresses of life in Japan. The bath is normally like a big, shallow hot tub. You clean yourself FIRST using a little shower. Then you sit in the still water and relax! Sometimes you go by yourself and enjoy silence, or going to take a bath with friends is considered a social, bonding time.

This pictures are:
1) A Mother's Day flyer in a mall. As with all imported holidays in Japan, Mother's Day is particularly loved by retail stores and flower shops.
2) A detail from a poster featuring moms painted by their pre-school children.
3) A large (mural sized) poster that you see outside of Comme Ca Ism, a children's clothing store that is popular in Japan. I've always found the crying baby image pretty disturbing when I'm "shopping," but I guess the point is to notice the comforting father. It's a French store. A very expensive one.
4) My kids. I took this picture last weekend by the beach near Odawara.

I'll be posting festival pictures soon along with some better content (it's about time I took this exploration of Japanese culture more seriously again).

My recommended blogs of the day are Sinosplice (always a good read) for the humorous description of coloring his hair with "temporary" spray in China, and About Joel (don't miss the May 7 entry).