On Labor Day, the weather was perfect and we decided to go grape picking in Yamanashi. The day definitely had it's ups and downs. We took the scenic route down and stopped at a rest stop to take pictures of Fuji. Scarlett fell asleep so I stayed in the car with her. Quinn sat on Neal's shoulders and walked maybe 10 feet before he had a blow-out bloody nose. It was a mess! So we got everyone cleaned up and they went and took their picture in front of Fuji. However when they returned the Serena (our van) would not start ... the battery died. After asking 20 people if they had jumper cables in broken Japanese, one Japanese lady hunted a set down for us and we were off and running again. Once in town there were a million places to choose to pick some grapes. We randomly selected a spot and let the kids cut away. The Japanese grapes really are the best I've ever tasted!
Lucky for us, there was a geocache in an awesome park really close to where we went grape picking. We had our usual Japanese picnic style lunch which included onigiri, noodles, gyoza and random other oshii-ness. The park had a little wild animal part (very sad habitats) and then a great playground area with the usual zip line, roller slides, and other climbing equipment. We spent several hours playing before heading home. What we didn't know was that everybody else in the Kanto plains area had also decided to head home at the same time. The Chuo Expressway was at a stand still and the roads were also bumper to bumper. I know this because we got off and on a few times before just giving in to the fact that it was going to take us forever to get home. And it did ....almost 4 hours!
Can you guess where the geocache is in the last picture? Great hide!
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