Still not a full work week!

Petting Zoo: Looking at the goat on the right, I'd be scared too!

Last weekend was a three day weekend to commemorate the MLK holiday.  On Friday, SMS and I chilled out but Saturday was much more high energy.  We went to Le Soleil, a French countryside-themed park on the other side of the peninsula.  There was a huge playground, small restaurants, a small petting zoo, a plastic sliding hill, rideable mini-trains and a barn with cows and horses.  In order  not to appear like total weirdo creepers, we went with our friend and her two kids.  We had so much fun!  It was a gorgeous day and it was nice to be outside for such a long time.

Unfortunately, this is the only sled run documented in which I caused a sled fail and SMS and I ended up backwards

The plastic sledding hill and the petting zoo were my favorites.  The "sledding" was a lot of fun and climbing the hill over and over kept us warm.  The petting zoo was awesome because there was an aggressive-for-food goat that scared/fascinated my friend's son.  He kept pinching the food between his fingers rather than laying it in his palm so the goat kept lunging at him (without teeth).  John then would drop the food.  This cycle repeated several times until, finally, Rose was tired of paying 100 yen for the food cups.

R: Happy Hoe L: Sad cow

SMS had a great time too although he was slightly sad that we missed the cow milking, which he has always wanted to do.  I checked off that life milestone around age 4 when I went to a farm day camp where we milked cows, fed animals and were terrified of horses (wait, just me?).  But we will head back someday since SMS was unable to get on "the list."

That night, we saw Selma at the movie theater.  While it was apropos for the holiday weekend, I also wanted to try and see a "Best Picture" nominee from the Oscars 2015.  It was a great movie.  One of the most well-done aspects of the movie was its depiction of the individual costs sustained during a broader movement.  So many times in the news, broader events and demonstrations are reported along with the "number dead" counts, like it's just a cost of doing business.  This movie showed the four church girls, the white minister, the young black man as people who were killed, not just "the dead." The scenes may have been short but the message was very powerful.

L: The start of my crane collection R: Tomyozaki Lighthouse

On Sunday, we were a bit lazier and didn't head out until the afternoon.  We went South past the Kanonzaki lighthouse to Cape Tomyozaki with a rebuilt lighthouse that was originally from the Edo Period.  It was a beautiful day and I'm glad we got outside.  I also learned how to fold origami cranes, which was awesome since I've always felt very inept at origami.

CW from left: Couple pic by the cave, street performers, near the caves (x2), candle flashlight in the cave

Monday was the MLK holiday and we celebrated by going to a popular Kamakura/Enoshima brunch spot named Bill's.  On weekends, the line is intense but on Winter weekdays, one can walk right in (Summer is another story).  I had the ricotta pancakes which were deliciously fluffy.  They were served with a lot of honeycomb butter.  It was all delicious although ultimately, my stomach felt very heavy!  We headed over to Enoshima to explore/walk it off.  There, we walked up and down many stairs, saw a street performer complete amazing feats of balance and we explored the caves on the back of the island.  It was very beautiful and we even saw the original shrine from the 500s (ostensibly).  I'm so glad I had another outing to Enoshima since the only other time I've been was very rainy!

The four-day work week was nice.  I had a tonsil-a-thon on Thursday with several tonsillectomy cases.  Not my favorite cases but sometimes it's nice to complete a (relatively) high-volume of cases in a day.