In The Book Bag

When I was in town the other day I decided to pop into the new Book Off (yes, that's the name) it's part of a chain and there is also Hard Off and House Off!

I picked up a lovely Taschen Dali book and a couple of novels for Ebi-kun, that I have squirrelled away. 

I also picked up Wenny Has Wings which is marketed as a kids book but I wanted to read it first to make sure it was suitable. The books is a set of letters that Will, aged 11 sends to his little sister. The two of them were in a traffic accident and the sister, Wenny was killed. Will died for 10 minutes and saw the light but then came back to earth. 

The letters are touching and take you through the roller-coaster of emotions that Will goes through, from the guilt of not protecting his little sister, to missing her to hating her and all the family issues too.

This is not a feel good book, I ended up sobbing into my coffee! I talked to Ebi-kun about it and will leave it on the shelf, then if he feels drawn to it he can read it, at least he has the heads up before diving in. I imagine a child reading this will feel differently that an parent.

Ebi-kun is totally hooked on the Bear Grylls books, he has just finished up the third one and can't wait to get his hands on book four, he'll have to wait until Santa gets here! These are great books for boys and I imagine quite a few girls would like them too. Very exciting story lines.

What are you reading at the moment? How about your kids?

Dali - melting clock sculpture

Our latest artist adventures have introduced us to Salvador Dali (using this book). We touched on him briefly before when we visited the Dali museum in Fukushima a couple of years ago. The melting clocks definitely made an impression so I suggested to Ebi-kun to made a melting clock sculpture.

He used paper clay, something I hate working with but Ebi-kun seems quite happy to use it. First he rolled it flat and then used a cutter to cut out a circle. To get the melting effect he used the paper clay box and molded the clay to the box and then stretched out the bottom. He then left it to dry over night.

The next day he painted it, you will not believe how much gold paint we get through in this house! A little trick when doing the numbers, get them to put 12 on first then 6 followed by 9 and 3, that way it is easier to put in the other numbers in the correct positions.

Turned out pretty cool. Since he made it I am wondering if we could make a real clock in the same way, I know I can get the clock mechanism, I think as long as the numbers were placed correctly we could do it, hmm, you maybe seeing a melted clock 2.0 in the future!

If you are wondering what the clock is sitting on, it is his writing station, there is a detailed post here and Mariah has just done a great round up of writing stations including Meg's, a bit of writing station envy going on over here!

Last days Of Golden Week...

Yes, I am still playing catch up!

So, our last day in Kitakami, we had a lovely breakfast (doesn't it taste better when someone else has cooked it?) and aimed to set of early, trouble was we couldn't separate these two, they had become best buddies and just wanted to play!

 Eventually we set off, the traffic wasn't too bad most of the way, it did clog up at one point due to an accident so we pulled off at the services for a bite to eat and a samurai photo opportunity...

 We made it to the youth hostel in Fukushima around 4.30pm. The place we stayed is at the foot of Mount Bandai and is famous for Goshiki-numa (5 coloured lakes). Due to the mineral deposits from a volcanic eruption the lakes have their own delicate colours. It was too late for us to do the whole hike and see all the lakes but we walked about half of it, they really were pretty and we decided to go back another time and camp.

 We were up bright and early the next morning, mainly because breakfast was served at 7.30am so we had another wander around the lakes but went in the opposite direction this time. We spotted this little beastie, I thought it was a snake at first but then reaslised it had legs, we did spot quite a big snake warming itself in the sun but since non of us have a clue about snakes, or more to the point, which ones are dangerous, we stayed a good distance away.

 After the early morning jaunt, we headed just down the road to the Salvador Dali museum, yes, one of the biggest collections of Dali artwork is housed in the middle of nowhere in Japan - go figure! It was a good exhibit to take kids to because of the strange sculptures and paintings, Ebi-kun really enjoyed it and decided that his favourite sculptures were the melting clocks and his favourite painting was The Battle of Tetuan.

Then it was back on the highway and back home. Shattered. In need of a holiday.