Born to be a star?

The weather has been beautiful lately, and I am almost finished with the monster project, so I've been doing my best to get us out of the house during the day as much as possible. It helps Sara (and me, not that I need it) sleep so much better when she has a good run around outside too.

Today, we went to the conbini to get some snacks, and then off to the park behind our house. Sara was asleep in the stroller about 3 seconds after getting in, which meant I was able to have a nice quiet lunch in the park. And quiet it was, there were almost no other kids there. When Sara woke up she had a good run around, few trips down the slide, run through the grass, then she got to the stairs. Those bloody stairs, followed by her bloody knees, but I digress. Up and down, up and down, up and down, until I get sick of it, because she never, ever, ever will, no matter how much blood is dripping off of her. So I pick her up screaming bloody murder and decide it is time to coax her back onto the playground equipment.

As we're walking back down towards the playground, I notice lots of men in construction worker garb walking around with toolboxes, and think "This is an odd sight, but where have I seen this before?" And then it dawned on me "はじめてのおつかい” (First Errand) a program shown on TV usually around the New Year's and O-bon holidays, where really young kids are sent on their first errand all alone, or with a younger sibling. Anyway, when I looked around, sure enough there were two little girls in the middle of all those "construction workers".

As I was cleaning off Sara's knees the two girls started to play in the fountain in the park. It's only about 15-20cm deep, but the girls were running around having a blast, and slowly started taking off pieces of their clothing one by one, until one of the girls was buck-naked. It was then that a staff member stepped in. We were too far away to hear what she said, but I had a good laugh watching.

There is another kind of fountain in the park where you rotate a handle that kind of looks like the steering wheel on a boat, and water comes out. Sara is totally into playing with water at the moment (along with climbing stairs), so when the two sisters were playing with the water, Sara was right in there playing with them. I doubt we will be on TV though because I would expect that in that situation we would have to sign some sort of release, and I'm sure they have plenty of other footage to throw in the 30 minute segment, considering they were probably filming for a good 3 or 4 hours. But who knows, we may be in the background somewhere, so next time the show is on, probably during O-bon? look for the 2 sisters from Nagano-shi, and maybe you'll catch a glimpse of my little star too! (She'll be the one in the white t-shirt and pink shorts with the gaijin mother following her around saying "dame yo")