Toys For Entertaining Travelling Toddlers & Children in Restaurants & Hotels Improvised

How do you keep your little ones entertained when travelling? You are waiting for your first course or main course to be served in a restaurant. Or you are in your hotel or self-catering suite, waiting for an important phone call. You want the children to be quiet but happy.

Cat's cradel picture from Wikipedia.

String For Cat's Cradle

We gave three children aged 3, 9 and 11 a book each. The books were wrapped in discarded brown paper and tied with old plain colour string. I was embarrassed not to have fancy coooured paper and ribbon. However, the 11 year old girl immdiately used her string to start cat's cradle and eave patterns on her fingers. The other two children wanted to be shown by her how to do it. That kept all three of them entertianed for 15 minutes until the food arrived.

The moral is, save a piece of string in your bag to creat a game. If you have two children, they can entertain each other with copying and competing.

Paper Fortune Teller

The one most people know is the fortune teller, made by folding in the corners of a swuare, turning the paper over, folding in the corners again. Draw numbers on the four top visible corners. 

Underneath write the question, or answer, or a good fortune prediction.

Children can decorate the top four corners.

From Wikipedia.

Paper Napkin Origami

You can use the white paper from envelopes thrown in the waste bin, or used to give you information on the hotel or conference centre. Or a spare paper tablemat for children in a restaurant. You will find instructions on the internet if our hotel or restaurant has a connection.

If not, you can download an instruction, printing at home or in the office.

Learn how to make simple paper folds. 

 A DIY Dolls House

You can improvise a dolls house from a shoe box and a tote bag. 

DIY Dolls House Furniture

A box from a free pen, made a a miniature sofa-bed for a Fisher Price dolls' house which had no funiture. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

A case for a pen (a free gift from Jiva Hoa Lu Retreat, Vietnam) opens up to make a miniature sofa.

Hoa Lu means flourishing capital. Hoa Lu is a former capital of Vietnam.

The small box in the bathroom or from previous trips makes a small suticase or delivery package.

Key Rings

The doll on a key ring (detached from the key ring) inhabits the house.

The car on a key ring (detached) becomes a car outside the house.

Flowers & Bases

Tiny artificial flowers from a corsage make a vase of flowers, or a plant plot. 

A thimble makes a plant pot or vase., or hem

Small coins make stepping stones on a green paper lawn.

Toothpicks make walking sticks ski sticks or broom handles.

An old toothbrush head makes a broom, or brush for a dustpan and brush. 

Dental floss makes a washing line in the bathroom or hangs teeny curtain, or xmas decorations from sparklers.

Christmas Cake Toppings

Christmas cake toppings include trees for indoors or by the front door or beyond the window.

A postcards of a hotel can go behind a window to provide a street view. when viewing the house from indoors.

A wine bottle cork maes a stoool or table covered with a teeny piece of fabric, such as an old handkerchief or hem of a skirt, or the end of a long tie belt. For stability, glue a coin under the cork.

A parasol from a cocktail makes as umbrella or a garden umbrella..

See later post on March 5th.

Last look at the CNY decorations, plants, hangings, door handle hanging, and origami rabbits

 

Decoration at a nursery school. Patterned paper folded into an origami rabbit for the year of the rabbit (zodiac sign). Decorations in black felt tip pen drawn on to show a rabbit's face by the child. They eyes are back circles with the centre of the circle left clear showing the paper. Plus three lines each side for whiskers.Rabbits like cats have whiskers the width of their bodies to ascertian whether they can get into holes and through gaps.

 Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Door handle decoration. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

The eyes on this rabbit are drawn dofferently. Two black circles filled in like discs, and a black circl around touching th bottom of the disc.an

Plant pot with plant used to hand goodwill greetings. One of the popular signs says Prosperity. Sometimes the signs are hung upside down to stop the luck falling out!

Some of the Singaporeans are very superstitious. One of my friends complained that a member of staff gave notice on the grounds that she thought she had upset the house ghost and it was angry with her.

I told my friend, "I'm an expert on ghosts. You have to have your house at the right temperature. They don't like comfortably warm houses. They like icy cold places. Turn down their air conditioning and the ghost won't like it.

I thought about hedgehogs, which are nocturnal, and the sick ones are up in the daytime, and try to hide from you.

I added, "Besides, most ghosts are nocturnal. Only the sick ones are up in the daytime. You can easily tell it to go back to bed. Most guides have suffered misfortunes and are scared of people."

Notice the other symbols of Chinese New Year, such as spring flowers. The festival is also called Spring Festival. Another symbol is red lanterns. A third name is Lantern Festival for the last day, the 15th day.

Ten Oriental (Japanese) Words You Already Know

Japanese flag

We know more Japanese words than we realise. Just do a quick count of the words you know. You don't know a single word? Yes, you do. What inspired this thought of mine?

On Instagram I saw a friend's picture of papercutting Philippine style, kiri gami. At first glance it was a long word which I could not remember. ki-ri-ga-mi. Japanese is staccato, even toned, every syllable pronounced, like bullets fired from a machine guns.

I re-read the word for paper cutting, kirigami, and it sounded familiar. It sounded like origami.  So I looked up the word for papercutting. That sounded like origami. So I looked up origami. Well, I never.

Ori means folding
gami means paper.

So I can go into a shop and ask for orgami gami - paper folding paper. So can you. I thought you would be interested in seeing how many Japanese words you already know.

The word origami is already familiar. I didn't know the word kirigami. But it is easy to remember that kiri is cut. K and C sound the same, alliterative. Kiri - cut. Cut - kiri.

So I could go into a pharmacy or visit a doctor in Japan and point to my stomach and say hari.

Let's add what else we already know.
Goodbye is Sayonara.
What about hello? People answer the phone, mushi mushi.

Hai is not Hi but yes. I can remember that by using the phrase, 'Yes, hi'. Imagine somebody asks, is that you, maybe using your name.
Angela?
Yes - hai.
I think, 'Yes, hi.'
I say: Yes, hai.

English - Japanese
belly - hari
cutting - kiri
folding - ori
goodbye - sayonara
hello (on the phone) mushi mushi (written moshi moshi)
paper - gami
paper cutting - kirigami
paper-folding - origami
suicide by knife - harikiri
yes - hai

Japanese
hari - belly
gami - paper
hai - yes
harikiri - literally belly cut(ting) - ritual suicide with knives in the days before guns
kiri - cutting
kirigami - paper cutting
moshi moshi, pronounced mushi mushi - hello on the phone
ori - folding
origami - paper folding
sayonara - goodbye

Now, if I am asked if I know any Japanese I can smile and rattle off ten words:

Here's a bonus:
kamikaze - divine wind

https://www.rocketlanguages.com/japanese/words/basic-japanese-words

A great website about compound Japanese words and their pronunciation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendaku

You might prefer to stick with or supplement with
Duolingo


Memrise


Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, teacher of English and other languages. Please share links to your favourite posts.

When Do You Take A Gift to Dinner Or Tea Invitations In The Far East?

Take A Gift?
When I invited VIP members of the British Club and American Women's Association to lunch, I was quite surprised when they arrived with a wrapped gift for me. Sometimes, I presumed, this was because it was considered the done thing to reciprocate with a gift always. In that case, if they invited me for lunch, I should find a suitable gift to take for them when I visited their club or home.

Alternatively, I wondered if the gift might be brought because they were leaving the country, or for the next few months. Therefore they were unlikely to be able to reciprocate with a lunch invitation. So they had brought me a gift instead.

Singapore Clubs and Associations
In Singapore the American club rules require a certain proportion of the membership to be Americans. Depending on the international economic and employment situation, the waiting list and annual membership and joining fees may go up or down. If you are not an American passport holder, you may have to go on a waiting list. However, ladies can join the American Women's Association. You cannot use the pool unless you are guest of a member (who had to pay a fee for you).

But you can attend certain functions at the club. These may include annual dinners in the restaurants for groups such as a book group, or bridge group. Members of the ladies association and their husbands will usually be invited.

When I first arrived in Singapore, I had no family or friends in Singapore and because I was not working I had not work colleagues and nothing to do all day. I was really happy to invite any acquaintance to the club for a drink or coffee or lunch or dinner.

The people most likely to respond were the senior members of the American Women's Association, the movers and shakers, the people who organised the book groups, the bridge clubs, the Friends of the Museum, the Australian Women's Association, the Australian Women's Association sewing group, the American Club newspaper or Australian club newspaper editors, members of the local journalists' associations, local writers and authors and book club members or the British club womens' association book club organisers.

Japanese Reciprocation
I soon found that the Japanese ladies would eat only a one course meal and no drinks. However, they would invite me back to the Japanese club, or to their homes for tea.

When I invited the Japanese ladies to my home for tea, they brought a small cake or gift exquisitely wrapped in fancy paper with a bow or origami design on top and a hand written note of thanks in gold Italic writing.

Inviting people to dinner at a club is an alternative if you have no home because you are in transit at a small hotel, staying with friends, waiting for your furniture to arrive at a rented flat, or just suffering from jet lag.

Inviting People Home
You may be invited back to somebody's home, for example in Singapore. Americans in the Far East often hold pot luck parties. They insist that everybody takes away leftovers.

People who know each other instead often take a gift such as a fancy notebook or photo frame.

People who can't get babysitters or give their maid / amah the day off on Sunday might turn down an invitation to go out for dinner on Sunday night but invite you over for dinner on a Sunday night. You might offer to take wine and dessert if they are supplying the main course, nibbles and pre-dinner drinks.

You don't want to be the only person to arrive empty handed at a Japanese ladies tea party. If you are invited to tea or dinner with the Japanese, you might like to buy a small item from a Japanese store and tell them it is a gift, so that they can add suitable wrapping.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.
Author of How To Get Out Of The Mess You're In.