Easter

I know, Easter was ages ago now, but I don't seem to have that much free time lately for some reason...

Easter isn't celebrated in Japan, even in the purely commercial way that Christmas and Hallowe'en are. I'm sure it won't be long until someone realises that it's a great opportunity to sell chocolate and then it'll become a big event, but for now it usually passes me by unless I happen to look at a calendar from overseas. This year I also had my parents and K's international pre-school to help me remember.

I hadn't planned on any Easter celebrations, but then thought it would be nice to do something. So on Saturday we boiled some eggs, got out the wax crayons and stickers...


... mixed up some food-colouring-and-vinegar dyes...


...and made a few Easter eggs. There were spots and stripes, random scribbles, the Easter bunny and Humpty Dumpty (that's his arm you can see there on the red egg at the bottom. Obviously.).

Sunday was pretty cold and windy but we headed outside for a little egg hunt anyway. Luckily I had some plastic eggs that K got at his pre-school's graduation party. Yes, mean Mum that I am, I kept them back, unopened, at the time; he did get lots of other snacks and little toys that day, so he wasn't completely deprived...

Anyway, K had a little note from the Easter Bunny instructing him to head out to the garden and look for 5 eggs and 5 little presents, one for each of us (Easter chocolates provided by Mum).

He really enjoyed it, and only needed a little bit of directing towards some of the treasures...

Then it was back inside to get down to the serious business of unwrapping his chocolate bunny and biting off its head. No time to waste on things like the taking off of coats!

Later in the afternoon there was time for one more little activity. A friend of Mum's had given her a decorate-your-own chocolate for K, and he had great fun squeezing out the yellow and green icing.

Most of the green icing ended up in one big heap, which he termed 'a mountain'...

To be honest I can't really say that I'm passing on my cultural heritage or important family traditions to K, as we didn't do egg hunts or egg decorating as kids, nor are we church-goers (did have the chocolate though!). But on the other hand, why not? We did some fun things together, indoors and out, that we wouldn't normally do. And there was chocolate involved - win-win, I say.