The start of our P6 journey - February

My students often asked me how old my children were and when I replied one is in P6, another in P4 this year, most of them have the same reaction - "Ah! Are you nervous?"

Honestly, not too nervous at the start of this year but gradually the pressure seems to pile up on me over the past weeks. I heard of some friends working their child hard since the last quarter of P5, some going to the extend of doing tuition for all subjects in P6. I have just attended the parents engagement workshop organised by his school to understand more about the exam format changes this year as well. Caden is not at all in any condition gearing up to be hard-working since the first month of the year and is still concerned with getting his playtime all the time.

I gave up nagging and pushing him to do revision on his own in his spare time. Recently, I told him that the resources (past year's exam papers, assessment notes) were already made available to him so we will leave it to him to make use of them. I know that this arrangement will probably leave all the exam papers/assessment notes untouched eventually, but I am hoping that some time later part of this year, he will be more self-motivated to start planning for his revision.

Last week, he started to clock in late nights from doing his homework from school. I supposed the school is also starting to gear up on completing the syllabus earlier so they will have more time to work on revising past years' topics. I couldn't help much at this point but just to be physically awake while he's doing his homework at 10plus pm!

Travelling to Japan with kids in Winter

Some pointers for me to keep a record

Travelling tips -

Japan is very well connected by its public transport network so there's no need to self-drive!

1) Buy unlimited 24 hour Metro pass to hop within Tokyo, Adult price is 600 yen and Child's ticket price is 300 yen (@Dec 2016). Plan the timing when purchasing the 24 hour pass to ensure that you can fully utilize the trip the next morning.

2) Have some 1000 yen notes ready if you foresee that you are taking a lot of local bus rides. These will help to pay for the fares because the machine only takes in 1000 yen notes.

3) Buy Hakone Free passes (near Odakyu Shopping mall in Shinjuku station) if planning to do more than 2 days activities in Hakone. Great value.

4) Book JR passes in SG before the trip, cheaper than getting them direct in Tokyo. There are 5 trips to utilize with the JR passport.


Outfits for weather below 9 degrees

1) Thermal wear - we were on the normal Uniqolo heattech range and it didn't help that well. Maybe extra-warm series will do better. Leggings are good to keep the legs warm. With heattech pants, wearing jeans will be fine.

2) Socks - heattech or woolen socks will help greatly

3) gloves - cheap gloves can't do much, invest in heattech or woolen ones which are useful

4) scarf - invest in good woolen scarves which will save you from feeling frozen!

5) covered shoes - sports shoes with breathable fabrics will allow the chill to sip through. Best footwear is to get well-covered shoes / boots

6) Face masks to prevent the nose from dripping!


Medicine

1) Vitamin C Gummies/pills to pop everyday!

2) Lip Balm

3) Moisturizers

4) running nose and fever medication

5) motion sickness pills


Games
Monopoly board game, Uno cards are some good choices to keep them occupied


Shopping

• Midori Nagano station - Made in Japan working shoes - so light and comfortable
• Niko and..  - good nice clothes
• Yodobashi Camera for electrical goods and cosmetics products
• Loft for stationery and bags
• Issey Miyake BaoBao 
• Flying Tiger at Omotesando or Shibuya
• Kiddy Land at Omotesando
• Favourite in my list  - Sunshine City at Ikebukuro! B1 has a few home living product stores at good prices

Tokyo - Day 11 - 14th Dec 2016 Ikebukuro and Tokyo Dome

On our last full day in Tokyo, we decided to spend it in Ikebukuro again. We had some western breakfast near our hotel while Caden joined Brian's family for beef bowl in Yoshinoya which happened to be located next to our cafe .

simple pleasures

Ethan's breakfast

I guess when we are on holiday, even the simplest food choices tasted so nice.. coupled with the nice weather, it just made the whole experience even better!

We proceeded to Sunshine city and the first store we checked out was this:

The boys had some games played in the  Pokemon store, I would think it's fun, because they were so engrossed when playing the games with each other and they went back for a few more rounds after we had our tea-break.

Lunch was within Sunshine City because mummies haven't had enough of their shopping done!

In this restaurant, we were supposed to cook our own food

After all the shopping done at late afternoon, we proceed to Tokyo Dome..although it was only 4plus in the afternoon, it was already nightfall in Tokyo..

such a nice park

With the all time favorite Ultra-man statue 

the scariest roller coaster I ever seen

The boys had so much fun in the arcade

It was a day dedicated for the kids as well as mummies! I supposed the dads have done a good job in keeping all the boys entertained and happy. Sunshine City is a place where there were a lot of  home living products which were quite reasonably priced (everything was so nice!) and also some good choices to bring back souvenirs.