A day in Kichijoji

November 3rd is a national holiday, "Culture Day", in Japan. But Hubbo had to go to work, so my Little Man and I went on a date to a park in Kichijoji.
He played at the playground, went to the small zoo section and checked out an elephant, lots of monkeys, deer, ducks, squirrels, racoons, goats, fox, and some other not-so-exciting animals, and nervously held a marmot in his lap.

After a 100 yen ride on the bullet train and some other rides in the amusement section of the park, I was able to negotiate an hour of real "culture" time inside the sculpture museum. They had a special free concert since it was Culture Day! You can't see her face in this picture, but the harpist came all the way from Belgium! They played 10 pieces, varying from classical music to songs from the Ghibli film, Tonari no Totoro, and ended with the Japanese folk classic Akatombo. We listen to music all the time at home, but it was so nice to listen to live, acoustic, professional music! I try to expose Cutie to such events as often as I can, but after about 30 minutes, he was bored and wanted to leave so he could steer the cycle boat. His legs were way too short to reach the pedals, so I was the only one who got a good 30 minute workout for 600 yen. After a late lunch and ice cream, we went someplace for me: Sheep Meadow has beautiful hand dyed yarns. They don't have a lot of bulky yarn; most of it is pretty fine, and they are all quite pricey, which means the total price ends up to be a lot. But the colors are so beautiful! At this point, Cutie was pretty tired and I couldn't spend time ooh-ing and aah-ing and mentally drooling over these yarns, so I just asked them for 2 more balls of a cotton yarn that I had run out of, and took some pictures and went on to Avril. Avril and Sheep Meadow are about only 3 blocks apart from each other. Avril is where I made a felted iPod shuffle case with my knitting buddy S back in May. I found these variegated 50% wool, 50% silk blends that I thought might be good for Clapotis, that I would like to knit someday. I'm very proud of myself for not having bought anything at either Sheep Meadow or Avril! Must finish up current projects first!