Day 7 - 11 Jun 15

It was an early day. We were woken up at about 6am, thanks to the boys who beat the timing on my alarm clock. Anyway, it was better to have ample time to prepare and so we got up and get ready to start the day.

After breakfast, we checked out of our hotel at 930am and we drove about an hour to our first destination - Kaga Fruitland - for strawberry picking. A small bus took us to the designated area where the strawberries were planted. Each kid was given a small pail (to throw the strawberry leaf) and a wet towel. A guy spoke in Japanese and though we had language barrier, his charade was good and we understood that he meant we had to twist the strawberry to loosen it from the stalk and not to pluck it out by just pulling it off. So off the kids went - given half an hour - picking strawberries and eating them. And the strawberries tasted really sweet and they tasted more like sweets than fruits. It was a memorable trip and indeed a "fruitful" experience.

We left Kaga Fruitland at about noon and drove for another hour to Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum. Let me call this J's world. Before visiting the dinosaurs - or rather their skeletons - we had lunch at its restaurant and it was a pretty decent one and this place being J's world, he yakked away about the various names and types of dinosaurs that he knew and that his ambition is to become a paleontologist. But I must say I'm pretty impressed by the usually long names of dinosaurs that he could actually remember.

After lunch, I then proceeded to browse through the area and took some pictures of these tall and reconstructed dinosaurs. Half the time, I was watching the kids and making sure that their antics had not got the better of them. We also visited the souvenir shop and got some stuff.

Just outside the museum, there was a small play area. There was a long and winding slide and a mini flying fox. Needless to say, the kids went crazy over it (and the adults too). I could imagine them going on and on if only time stood still.

We drove for an hour to our accommodation for the night - Kagari Kisshotei. We bought some gifts from the shop at the hotel while waiting for the staff to check us into our rooms.

Dinner was at 7pm. We were served charcoal-grilled seafood and some other delicious dishes. My wife and I also ordered, in addition, two plates of beef and its taste was heavenly. The cost was only 1,500 yen for 100 grams. We were all very satisfied after dinner.

I was settling the bill and while I thought it was time to head back to our rooms after that, I saw from afar that the kids were playing some games. And yes, they had already begun when I got closer to have a look. The games were not free of charge as originally thought; we had to pay 200 yen per game. There were two games. One was like pinball (without the flippers) and bingo combined in one customised wooden board. The balls had to get into the holes in the middle of the board to form the "bingo". The other was like ring toss and it had nine cones (three by three) on a wooden square board which one had to toss the rings from a distance around the cones to achieve the "bingo" result. Simple games but just seeing the plain joy from each kids' face was really heartwarming enough.

We got back to our rooms at about 9pm. A tired but a fun day it was.