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Return On Investment

It was Emperor Naruhito's birthday today. He turned 65. It was also my boss's birthday. He's 51. The national holiday was for the emperor though.

Auntie Kyla got a crick in her neck and made sure to tell us she doesn't blame our sofa. I loved watching Eri awkwardly putting a menthol compress on her back.


And we did it again. This time we got in the car and drove down to Nagamachi and played and ate at IKEA. They have a kids play area that the boys love but really IKEA is just one giant big box play area where grown-ups and kids can frolic about and nap and eat and impulse-buy. 


Also our IKEA has awesome views of the bullet train coming and going from Sendai to Tokyo. 


My only impulse purchase was hot dogs. One hundred yen. Two for me and one for Mu. Well I snuck another one in for me when no one was looking but what can ya do. That Scandinavian mustard is so dern good. 



We were gonna visit the Sendai Streetcar Museum, one of our favorite places, but luckily I checked online before we went because they were closed, so we headed downtown for more exploring and treasure hunting.



Kenzo in particular was really great at finding the geocache boxes. I wish he would use that know how to find his school name tag on Monday mornings.


We parted ways with Auntie Kyla in Ichibancho. We had to head back and get the car and she had to grab the 17:45 airport train. The boys are so sweet with everyone. They demand hugs and kisses every time they have to say goodbye.


After three days of non-stop shenanigans we arrived home to Eri's delicious vegetable soup for dinner and then quickly headed to the bath, where I accidentally knocked Osamu's loose tooth out a couple of days prematurely. I was just washing his face in the bathtub and the face towel snagged his jingly-jangly loose front tooth and boy oh boy if I hadn't have caught it like the master of hand-eye coordination that I am that tooth woulda been down the drain.


All was well. Tooth recovered. The Tooth Fairy was texted and set to arrive to collect said tooth and leave 100 yen which prompted the boys to ask me again why the Tooth Fairy collects teeth and what does she do with them and I made up a story about how she invests them in projects and when you grow up you'll get some sort of a return on that investment and I hope they never remember I said that.

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