Tomorrow’s the Natsu Matsuri/Summer Festival at Yui’s daycare. 楽しみにしています‼
Above is the announcement posted right at the daycare entrance. The white block is for us to enter the PIN so we could enter the premises. I like it how the arrangement of the number changes after every input.
Today (again, technically, yesterday) was the Kanagawa fireworks festival/hanabi. The past years, we just stayed at the office to avoid the crowd – we’re lucky that the fireworks display is easily seen from our office windows so we can enjoy the beautiful fireworks sans the crowd but also sans the sound. I wasn’t able to watch it this year though as I had to get out of the office at 5 to pick Yui up. Nor was hubs able to watch it because he went home early to avoid the crowd. And boy was there a crowd!
The yearly hanabi always attracts large crowds that the police/city government had thought of means to ease the flow of people. For one, they’ve set up these dividers to separate people going to the Minato Mirai area and those going to the station back to their homes.
Obviously, I’m on the wrong side and against the tide of people. My bad! There were police around announcing where people should go but I couldn’t understand them.
I haven’t been able to take photos of the fireworks yes, but thankfully, these ladies in their yukatas happily agreed to pose for me!
The yukata is much less elaborate and much cheaper than the formal kimono but it’s still pretty nonetheless!
Today (or technically yesterday since it’s now past midnight) was our company’s family day – a day in which employees’ kids could get a glimpse of their parent’s workplace. The program is open for those who have kids from 4th to 6th grade in elementary. So for those colleagues who have kids around that age, they had their kids tag along with them for most of the day.
You couldn’t just bring along your kid on an impromptu whim however, your kid has to be registered ahead of time. The program is very well organised, I think, owing primarily to security reasons. The kids even have their own IDs with their photos on it – with the card coloured a pretty pink! whilst employees generally have blue or green – which they can use to open the glass doors for certain floors of the building.
If I were the kid, I’d be really wide eyed the whole day. First they had an orientation which took most part of the morning. One of the assistant area lead of our project had a kid who was part of the program so we all had lunch with him. The early part of the afternoon his Dad took him to meet our Clients who shared that they too have the same program in their country. After which the kid stayed on the vacant desk beside his Dad and “helped” by filing some outputs. Yet even with the simple task, he was very serious with it.
I’m really glad there’s such a program in the office. Sometimes people work so hard the work-life balance is often off-balance, and leaning always on the work side. Excited for our little one’s turn some 9 years from now! Haha.