Lola is 11, gardens, biscuits & tantrum

Today we went to the park in Takayama. Park is maybe the wrong word since it’s a large Japanese garden, and it's particularly beautiful, with the autumn reds and yellows right now. I let the pictures speak for themselves, and surely there are many more photos to come from Flo and Bernard.
It’s Lola’s 11th birthday today, and she is happy despite not having our traditional breakfast in bed with flowers. Instead, she has a Japanese breakfast, which she clearly loves. We did, of course, sing happy birthday and gave her a bunch of small gifts we had found in Nara.
After the garden, Lola went on to a lesson in making Japanese biscuits and sweets. Flo, Lennox, and Nora went too. Bernard took a well-earned rest, whilst I took Oscar for a walk to the local pachinko hall. He loved it and even more so a shop with about 200 “boule” machines which was opposite.
When all were back, Oscar had a tantrum, and so as a punishment, he missed the dinner, and as a result, so did I. After that, though, we still had birthday cake, made of mushi, a particular favourite of Lola. We had the candles in the room, so to prevent an evacuation, I played punkawallah to make sure the smoke didn’t reach the smoke detector
Lola is 11, hurrah!Read more