The wrath of the acorn people

I'm sure that, like myself, many have wondered what kind of damage can be done to a traditional Japanese house by 13 four- and five-year-olds. Several weekends ago, we invited m's entire class, the Acorns, from the day care center to visit. The parents sat outside and we barbequed up a feast, while the kids played pretty much unsupervised inside, since it had gotten pretty windy on the beach. (We would never have been so forgiving, of course, had we not known that this was all scheduled for destruction.) Above is the aftermath of two kids going on a deliberate paper poking session with the shoji doors. I do offer in their defense the fact that we already had a few holes that we had not repaired, so it may have looked like the proper thing to do, and most of the kids, unfortunately, had no idea what shoji is. On the other hand, it did get me to start thinking that with the same number of kids a few years older, we might be able to save a huge amount of money on tearing this place down.