Holt Turns 3!

Sometimes I find that the holiday season is almost too much for me to handle. We celebrate Solstice, then Christmas, Ridge’s birthday, New Year’s, and finally, Holt’s birthday. There’s so much planning and so many activities that at time it can become overwhelming. This year, however, I found myself quite grateful for the short time span separating the boys’ birthdays. Holt had a hard time on Ridge’s special day, and we kept telling him that his birthday was coming soon. Fortunately, it was only a week away and he was very excited.

Owing to my sons’ recent obsession with a Japanese animation hero, Anpanman, I made a cake for Holt, at his request, in the image of this unusual hero. Anpan is a kind of bread. Our hero has this bread as a head. His friends include such characters as Currypan Man (‘pan’ is the Japanese word for bread), Cremepan Man, Melonpan-chan (chan is used for girls similar to the way ‘san’ is used with adults), and so on. Here's a couple of links, in case I've peaked your curiosity.
Visit Anpanland
More on Anpanman
Unfortunately, we’ve had to ban the boys from watching it for now due to an increase in violent behavior on their part. But I digress.

So, here are a few photos of the cake, birthday ring, and Holt blowing out his candles. That must be every child’s favorite part, for it is certainly a task attacked with relish. For lunch we had Kraft macaroni and cheese and peanut butter sandwiches. This was the first peanut butter (non-Japanese, which doesn’t really count) the kids had eaten in nearly four months. They were in heaven. Not a nutritious lunch by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a birthday, so we just threw caution to the wind.

The Table
AnPanMan cake - I had to bake it in a pie plate, as round cake pans are hard to come by.
Blowing out candles

I’ve also included a photo of the package of bread I bought for sandwiches. Usually, bread is sliced to approximately the same thickness as that used for Texas toast. I didn’t want that much, so managed to procure this ‘sandwich bread’ in all its over-packaged-glory.

a package of 'sandwich bread'

The night before Holt’s birthday, we had an unexpected visitor in the form of Mrs. Tao. Mr. and Mrs. Tao own our daily haunt, Seicomart, a local grocery store, and a gas station. Mr. Tao is a prominent member of the village community and quite a character. She had called to invite us to dinner at their house. My guess as to why she came in person is that using the telephone is extremely difficult when two people do not speak each other’s language very well. We arranged to visit them on the following night, the evening of Holt’s birthday. With Holt only being 3, and not having the energy for a repeat visit from Ryuya, I had purposely planned for his birthday to be only family, so we were free to go over to the Tao’s house for dinner.

We had a nice meal, though the boys refused to eat anything but sugar (a situation that has been occurring repeatedly when we go to a person’s house for dinner, and one that I have now remedied). Mrs. Tao bought small pieces of cake for the boys and candles for Holt to blow out; a sweet gesture, I thought. We had a large bamboo bowl/platter with sushi rice and toppings, some venison, a nice green salad, and other small side dishes. For the first time since arriving in Japan, we sat at a table with chairs while dining in someone else’s home. I was quite surprised, and did not know if it was merely for our benefit. Regardless, we had a lovely time and thoroughly enjoyed the venison.