Lovely Miss Maia had her first birthday back in October. She started walking at age one year one day (now she's on the run).
Sam had been reading a picture book with a great picture of a birthday cake covered with fruit, including melon slices, grapes, and so on. We could not find that one, though maybe we'll find something like that for his birthday. I'm thinking we'll order something for him from the nice bakery near his bus stop where he waits to come home from Youchien. One day he took off his backpack and left it near their shop. We thought it had been left on the bus and so explored that option for awhile, and then called the shop using the number on one of the many point cards they have given us for our previous business. Sure enough when they went outside, now in the dark, to look it was still there. A similarly impressive lost and found experience was when I dropped my Foreigner Registration Card, which one is supposed to carry at all times and takes a month to get, in a taxi. I had not chatted with the driver at all, but he came to my office building where he had dropped me off and found me. He even bowed (as did I). In NYC I'm sure you would hand him a wad of of bills, but this would be considered rude here, implying he would only do things like that for monetary reward.
Anyway, after taking her for an outing to the Kitano Tenmangu flea market we shopped for some cake with fruit on it. I knew there was a Fujiya bakery near the station, and Fujiya is a classic Tokyo store that helped to popularize the ubiquitous strawberry cream cakes that are usually excellent. We picked out a few individual cakes of that sort and let her at it.
I only learned later that Fujiya is a bit in the dumps after a scandal last year over using expired cream and allowing too much bacteria in their cakes. Given what Maia did to it, I'm sure there was new bacteria in it anyway, but I felt rather guilty.
We got a really classy Christmas cake more recently.
