Samurai!

Recently, Henry, Nora and I went to the Portland Art Museum to see the Samurai exhibit (Brett was out of town). We pass a billboard for the exhibit almost daily and Henry had been dying to go see "real" Samurai. He's very into Ninjas and Power Rangers and the martial arts in general right now so this was right up his alley. That said, I was a little worried he might be disappointed because he has a pretty skewed idea of what Samurai are like (based almost solely on the Power Rangers version of Samurai);however, I'm happy to report that he loved it. It helped that the museum did a fabulous job curating the exhibit - including the stuffed horses as seen above and below. I don't know why Henry has such a sad look on his face; he was actually really excited to be there and to see those horses!

There were lots of weapons on display including a bunch of swords, knives, bow and arrows, and even guns. I had no idea that the Samurai used guns, but Henry was certainly excited to see them! He took over my camera about halfway through the exhibit and took lots of really cool pictures of the things that interested him.

Here he looks happier! We went on the Free Friday - we still had to pay to see the special exhibit, but it was only $5 instead of $20. It was crowded, but it wasn't terrible. We had no problem moving through the exhibit and getting up close to the artifacts. Even Nora got in on the action!

Lastly, here's a picture of Henry trying on a replica of a neckpiece in the gift store. :)