Beware of Flying Kids

I know the title of this post is a wild translation of the text on this traffic sign I saw in Kakegawa City last month, but I thought it fitting! A more proper translation would be “(Please) take care of (children) suddenly jumping out (into the street)”. It’s just outside a kindergarten in the middle of the city. Don’t you just love the look on that kid’s face though? Taken at the crack of dawn.

Children and Their Parents

No matter where you are from or what language you speak, we are all the same, human beings alike. Parents and their children, sometimes just watching them interact fills me with happiness. I wanted to show you some photos of parents and their children I took while in Kakegawa City in Shizuoka Prefecture last month. I was lucky to see so many scenes like this that weekend, and for me it is not everyday I get a chance to photograph interaction between people, especially not as humane and loving as these.

1. A little boy is showing his Power Ranger mask to his father or grandfather. I have a such a soft spot for kids in glasses I had to get this picture.

2. An exhausted girl sleeping on her mother’s shoulder. Look at her drooling, just too cute.

3 & 4. Two photos of a father and his daughter. Her chocolate covered banana on a stick is sliding down, he helps her. Together they show such concentration on this banana and he puts all his effort into helping her finish her treat. And doesn’t he look a little bit like Russell Crowe? Several of my Japanese friends have, after seeing these two pictures, voted him the most handsome Japanese man alive. I tend to agree. Any man showing so much care and affection for his daughter must have a heart of gold.

Taking parenthood seriously, being good to our own and to other’s children, that is the only way we can ever repay whatever God it is we happen to believe in, for the privilege of being alive on this Earth.

Three Views of Kakegawa Castle

I have had a fascination with castles since I was a little kid, including these wonderfully un-warlike Japanese castles. There are quite a few still left in Japan and amazingly they are still (re)building new ones. This was rebuilt in the 90s using mostly volunteer donations. The original castle served to control an important road between western and eastern Japan hundreds of years ago. Today it serves mostly to put the city of Kakegawa in the middle of the tourist map of Shizuoka prefecture who was long dominated by the much more beautiful eastern parts.

I was up before dawn and made sure I caught the first rays of sunlight hitting the white walls of the castle. Not a tourist in sight and since I am a morning person through and through, climbing the hill to the castle at dawn was a wonderful moment for me. Serious lovers of all things Japanese will catch my allegory with the title of this post by the way. Enjoy!

Kakegawa City

A couple of weeks ago I spent a night in pleasant town to the west of Tokyo called Kakegawa, which is one of the centers of Shizuoka Prefecture. You might remember this from my post about Candy Art earlier this week. I went there to visit a friend and to check out the local festival and parks. I didn’t count on the excellent castle (to be featured in a later post) and active birds (see Parrot Attack, also a post earlier this week). Kakegawa like some other cities in Shizuoka prefecture and Nagoya nearby is one of the few places in this country with a significant non-Japanese population and in some areas I had some chances to practice the little Portuguese I remembered from my time spent in colonial era Macau.

I felt a little active and got up before sunrise to be sure to catch the first rays of light hitting the castle located on top of a hill in the middle of town. I misjudged the distance though and the few early morning walkers must have been a little bit taken aback by the foreign guy running through town with a bunch of camera equipment and a huge backpack banging around on his back. Anyway I made it there in time to get some interesting photos of Kakegawa city from above (click the photo for the best view), and a couple of shots of the the morning sky. I didn’t have time to stop and get the story behind this mural though, perhaps someone knows more about it? Enjoy!