Anpanman Japanese Superheroes

After Halloween, I got a lot of questions about Hazel's costume.  It only occurred to me then that I knew who she was, but really didn't know "what" she was.  As promised in my post from Halloween, I was going to write about her and her Anpanman friends.

When we first moved to Japan, I started noticing that cutesy little cartoon characters appeared in ads for everything from kids' toys to karaoke rooms for adults. There was one character in particular that kept showing up everywhere, he had a big round brown head and HUGE red nose, and cheeks- he was Anpanman.  At first, I thought he was ugly and annoying and never paid enough attention to find out who and what he was.  One day, one of my kids must have been reading a book in a store or something and I started looking through it at all of the bizarre characters.  I instantly became intrigued.  

Anpanman's name literally translates to "bean filled bread guy".  An is a red sweet bean paste, the cinnamon of Japan if you will, and Japanese people love it.  I have never acquired a taste for it however.  Anpan is sold at most bakeries here, it looks almost like a jelly donut, except it's not filled with sugary jelly.  In fact, a lot of bakeries actually take extra dough and garnish the bread with it so it looks like the actual Anpanman:

Anpanman was created during World War II by a Japanese writer named Takashi Yanase.  He was hungry and kept dreaming of eating anpan.  He created the superhero Anpanman, whose main superpower is to feed the hungry.  They can bite his head and eat his anpan and then his head regenerates itself.  The bad guy, baikinman (bacteria man) of course tries to infect him and make the food dirty and unfit to be eaten.  In this show, there are many many other characters- in fact, I found out from wikipedia.com, that there are over 1700 characters that have appeared in the cartoons and books.  A few of my kids' favorites are Currypanman, Shokupanman, Melonpannachan (see above Halloween photo), and of course Dokinchan.

Dokinchan was called "Sparkles" on wikipedia, which surprised me. The only information I could find about her is that she is sneaky (sounds like Hazel) and her name comes from the Japanese word for beating heart.  She appears in a lot of the cartoons with hearts in her eyes  because she is in love with one of the good guys, Shokupanman (sandwich bread head man).   For some reason, Hazel just loves her.  

These characters have taken a piece of my kids' hearts.  We have had two specific vacations here in Japan, just to find some famous Anpanman things.  In April 2009, we rode the Shinkansen to Okayama, where we boarded the Anpanman train.

We rode the train in the front car with pictures of the characters on the seats.  We literally rode it for an hour and a half, got off, then got back on another train to come home.  The things you do for your kids!

There is a museum on the island that it runs on, near the writer's home town, but it is not really for kids.  We were going to go, but I think it was more prints from the show and not a "fun" children's museum.  Of course, I found another Anpanman children's museum near Tokyo, in Yokohama, so in August 2009, we took a trip to Tokyo, mainly to go to that museum.

Check out our hot chocolate:

Here's a whole store full of Anpanman themed craft supplies!:

The walls inside the museum were all brightly colored:

There were displays set up with scenes from different movies, I love this one where the characters were disguised as pyramids:

This should give you an idea of the number of different characters:

There were statues of a lot of the characters:

They had the characters' cars for the kids to play in:

There was a playground:

There were balls:

And of course, there was a gift shop:

It was a fun and tiring day:

We have read books, watched movies, played toys, worn clothes, eaten food, had candy, drank water, used lockers, rode trains, used tissues, made cakes and much more, all based on these characters.  So far, three of my kids (and soon to be four) have asked me to make them birthday cakes themed from the show.  Stay tuned for the next post for the fourth :)

Sugar cookies

It's the sugar cookie time of year (then again, when isn't a good time for sugar cookies?).  One of my favorite things to do with my kids is decorate cookies.  A good sugar cookie recipe is hard to come by and I have tried many- they either stick to the counter-no matter how much flour you use, roll out too thin and won't retain the shape of the cookie cutter, or just don't taste right.  Well, a few years ago, I found this recipe on the internet (and I am not sure where)- but it is the best one I've ever used (so far).

Once, when my older brother and I were in school, my mom took my two younger sisters to a cookie club. We have this picture of them sitting with three or four of my cousins, all lined up with their decorated sugar cookies on a plate.  To this day, when my brother and I see that picture, I think we still get a little jealous that we never got to go.  So, I thought it would be fun to share the cookie decorating experience with as many people as possible and I asked my son's teacher if I could bring in cookies for the class to decorate.  My two youngest sons go to a Montessori school and their teachers were happy to allow a decorating activity into the classroom, especially the day before their Halloween parade.

I made each child a round orange cookie and brought in a tray of green icing and various sprinkles:

I then, wrote down instructions for two ways the kids could decorate their cookies (you see the candy corn for the nose, it is funny because many people from other countries have never heard of candy corn!  I brought one for each kid, worried it wouldn't be enough and there were tons leftover):

The teacher set up the activity and let the kids go up in groups of two to decorate.  Here is Hazel doing hers:

In one class, everyone chose the jack-o-lantern:

I'm not sure about the other class because they got to eat them after they made them

I think the kids really enjoyed it and I promised I'd bring some more in again around Christmas.

At home, I tried out making spider web designs in my icing and it turned out great!  It was also super easy! First, you frost a colored circle on the cookie.  Then, you put another color icing in a ziploc bag (or frosting bag if you're professional) and you cut a teeny tiny hole in the corner of the bag.  Squeeze the icing onto the cookie in a spiral pattern:

Then, using a skewer or toothpick, gently draw lines in the icing out from the center to the edge and you get a web ( my purple ones would have turned out nicer, except I got distracted and had to make breakfast- before I added the spirals- and it was slightly hardened, so it didn't move as easily), so it's best to do this all at once:

In the end, who cares what they look like, the taste so good!

Sugar Cookies:
Oven:  350'

3/4 cup butter (1 1/2 sticks)
1 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla

In bowl of mixer, cream together sugar and butter.  Once creamy and white, add in eggs, scrape down side of bowl and mix again, add vanilla.  Stop mixing, add in flour, baking powder, and salt, start mixing again.  **If you are going to color your dough and you are only using one color, add it in at the time of flour addition, this will ensure the color gets mixed in better and I think it's easier.  If you are doing more than one color, after flour is thoroughly incorporated, separate dough, add colors, then put in covered bowls and refrigerate about 1 hour.

Roll dough out on lightly floured surface and cut out shapes. Bake 10-15 minutes, depending on size of cookie.  Let cool before frosting.

Frosting:
2 TBSP butter
about 1 -1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
2-3 tsp milk

Cream the butter with about 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar.  Add 1 tsp milk, keep creaming, add in vanilla and a bit more sugar, keeping adding sugar then milk until you get the desired consistency/taste you want.

Shichi-go-san Festival

Today we participated in a Shichigosan festival.  This means, 7-5-3 festival.  In Japan, in mid-November,  3 and 7 year old girls and 3 and 5 year old boys participate in this festival, which is like a rite of passage.  On this day, Japanese children of these ages visit shrines, dressed in kimonos and hakama (which is what you will see my boys wearing), to drive out evil spirits and wish for a long healthy life.

The original significance of these ages beginning in ancient Japan, is that at age 3, children were allowed to grow out their hair, at age 5, boys were allowed to wear the hakama for the first time, and at age 7, girls were allowed to wear an obi (the thick band around the middle of the kimono) for the first time.

Getting ready was a big ordeal, this is what I saw and feared upon arrival.  Here are my four kids' outfits hanging all premeasured and hemmed, on the left is a purple girls' kimono for Addison, poor thing, he was traumatized.  Luckily, they were able to get a boys' one for him:

To give you an idea of how much is involved in putting on the outfits, here are some photos I took of the different phases of getting Owen dressed:

The festival that we participated in today was specifically for foreigners.  The ceremony was still in Japanese, but an English speaking woman explained to us what was happening.  There were about 40 or so children participating and the whole ceremony took about 10 minutes.

Here is the inside of the shrine:

Here are the kids sitting down listening to the ceremony:

This man is using this white thing to ward off bad spirits:

This man is ringing bells over the children's heads to have God bless them:

The whole crowd out front afterwards:

One of my favorites of each kid:

 




I let them be silly:

Each kid got to pick a prize on their way out for participating in the ceremony:

As we left, Hazel kept exclaiming "that was so fun".  And, as luck would have it, Nathaniel lost his second tooth during the ceremony.

Halloween 2010

This is a little late, but Happy Halloween!

For my kids' entire trick or treating career, we have been in Japan, where I have never worried about them getting a razor blade or poison in their candy.  It is a highly organized event that takes place in our neighborhood, even on a scheduled night (mainly the weekend so the dads are at home to help dole out candy or take the kids around to collect it).  Over the years, many of us have befriended local Japanese families or kids at school, who have all been delighted to join in on the fun, as it is not customary to trick or treat in Japan.  What a fun experience for those kids especially to get to participate in this event.  In our neighborhood, we are at an all time low of kids, I believe there are only 30 kids left (used to be over 60), but I ended up handing out candy to over 80 kids, that's how many extras jumped at the chance to join in.

The families participating that did not live here set up to give out candy at one of the vacant houses.  It's funny, because by now, I can tell whether my child got their candy from a foreign or Japanese family.  Most foreigners give out chocolate (I even had some resee's in mine and one woman came back super duper excited asking me if I found them in Japan- nope, my suitcase).   Most Japanese give out hard candy, lollipops, or something gummy, oftentimes in a cute little Halloween bag with several pieces in it.  Last year, thankfully not this year, there were open items in the bags, such as 3 animal crackers, 2 marshmallows, and a hard candy.  Although, I was sure they were not poisoned and as much as I trust Japanese people, the idea of an unsealed item on Halloween does not sit well and into the trash they went.

It sure will be culture shock to move back home and have to guess which houses will be handing out candy and which ones won't.  Not to mention, getting my husband home from work on time to help out since it won't be scheduled only on a non-work night ;)

This Halloween, we did not have our grandiose party like usual because I just didn't have the energy to put up and clean up all the decorations.  I will say however, with the Pumpkin Parade (trick or treating in the classrooms) the kids did at school and our neighborhood trick or treating, it was still a very "sweet" Halloween. I did however, save energy to make the kids' costumes.  Since I have noticed a lot of people looking at the Super Mario birthday party post, I thought I'd write about how I made the Mario and Luigi costumes that the older boys wore.

I bought the hats off Amazon.com (planned ahead and had my mom mail Luigi's, since Mario's was leftover from the bday in August).  I used white craft tape, cut out a circle and with a sharpie drew the letter on the circle.

The mustaches' were from brown felt.  Originally I stuck them on with double sided tape, but realized it wouldn't go the distance with these busy little people, so I took bracelet making elastic (small thin round elastic) and painted it with peach colored paint.  I sewed it to the mustache and even though you could see the elastic, no Super character complained.  The only complaint was that I made them dark brown, not black- can't win!

Even the non-Super characters had to have one, who would have thought mustaches could be so popular?

I found the white gloves in the cleaning section of the 100 yen store (dollar store here).

I had nowhere to find overalls here and no where to look for a store bought Mario or Luigi costume.  First, I bought a yard of denim fabric, I tried to get a wash that I knew would closely match a pair of their jeans.  I decided to make a faux overall top and pair it with jeans to make it look like overalls.  Luckily, we had a red and a green long sleeved top already.  I laid the shirts down on the fabric, and cut two pieces of the denim fabric the width of the shirts (I added 1/4 inch on both sides for a seam when I sewed them together).   As for the length, I made sure to leave the bottom length of the fabric about 3 inches longer than the shirts (so it would cover the button and top of the pockets of their jeans) and I cut across the top so it was about 1 inch under their armpits.

For the front piece, I angled the sides in to look like the bib of the overall:

For the back piece, I cut a small v in the middle and then angled around the sides to make it look like where the straps meet on the back of the overalls:

I sewed both the front and back together with the fabric facing (no serging, no edge finishing).  I turned them right side out and sewed two buttons on the front of the bib.   I cut out straps to be the width of the top of the back above the v, where they started to form.  I sewed on the straps, I made them long and then had the boys try the whole thing on, brought the strap over their shoulder and put velcro tape on the front of the strap and the back of the bib (behind the buttons) and pressed the strap closed.   This whole thing with cutting, buttons, and all took an hour for both kids' costumes.

I was quite paranoid because Nathaniel wanted to look so much like Mario that everyone would think he was the real Mario.  The "fake overalls" passed the test and he really thought he was Mario.  The costume is actually still sitting on his desk today.

To top it all off, I even downloaded some Super Mario remix songs and made a CD for the kids to dance to on Halloween night, let's just say they were more hyped up for that than if I let them eat their whole bucket of candy in one sitting.

I have had a lot of questions about Dokinchan (Hazel's costume)- that explanation is coming soon, especially since you will be seeing a LOT of that character for her upcoming birthday.