Jonas at park part 2

So, in my last posting I said that I would write more about Jonas at the park...
I think Jason will be posting about our camping trip tomorrow. It was fun and Akita is beautiful. Since we are in the city, we do not get to fully appreciate the nearby mountains. It was nice to see the countryside.

On Friday afternoon we stopped by our neighborhood park. I was surprised by the number of people there. At one point there were over 10 kids ranging from 2 months to 13 years. The other mothers were friendly and we were able to engage in the usual mother talk - names, ages, etc. If I am by myself strangers don't talk to me, but if I am with Jonas, I get approached all of the time and have learned some of the simple phrases that I get asked typically about Jonas. I am able to answer some questions in very SIMPLE Japanese. (his age, where we are from, what we are doing here, etc) Speaking of communication, I think it is funny to watch Jonas communicate with kids his age. They make 'noises' at each other so it is not really English or Japanese, but toddler talk which is understood in all languages I guess.

Jonas loves playing at the park. He climbs up the ladder of the slide incredibly fast. I didn't anticipate that he would be playing on the slide yet, but a few weeks ago he started up the ladder so I just closely followed him.

The two pictures are from play areas - the first one was a car dealership, the second one is the play area that we frequent in our email mall. I love that kitchen area. The room next to the kitchen room is the room where the video was shot of Jonas walking up and down the soft ramp in an earlier post. One of the things that I love about Japan are the play areas. There are play areas in all kinds of stores. They are much more abundant here than I ever noticed in the states. On Monday Jonas played in the play area at the electronics store and when he squatted down to look at a book his shirt rose up to expose his back. One little girl repeatedly walked over to him and tried to pull his shirt down so you could not see his exposed back. Cute.