Day 35: Grants Lagoon to Dora Point

We had a visitor towards the end of this day.
A pademelon, which looks quite like a wallaby,
except a bit stockier with a shorter tail.

Our free-free campsite at Grants Lagoon was just one of about half a dozen in close proximity on the coast at Bay of Fires, north of St Helens. Seeing as there seemed to be few camping and no bookings or fees, we decided to pack up and drive around the bay, looking at the sights and seeing if another campsite appealed for the next night. Grants Lagoon was nice, but unless you were planning to swim or kayak, there was not a lot to do or see in the immediate vicinity of where we'd spent the night.

So we drove north as far as the road would take us, to a place curiously called "The Gardens". No, there aren't many gardens there now, but legend has it that it was called that by one of the early influential women who found the area had many wildflowers. At The Gardens there was a short walk/rock scramble where we got our first glimpse of the Bay of Fires. Very beautiful!

More stunning sand and clear water

After that we drove south a little bit, parked, and walked to the end of Taylors Beach and back (a bit over an hour). Then we ate lunch and explored the various free campsites between there and St Helens, settled on one near Binalong Bay township, accessible via a relatively rough dirt road. The campsite was called Dora Point in the Humbug Point Nature Recreation Area. Again, a sparsely populated campsite with no facilities except flushing loos and fenced-off campsites.

A common feature in this section of the coast is
this orange lichen on rocks. 

We went for another walk out to the ocean. My phone said at the end of this day I'd walked nearly 12 km. 

Taylors Beach

We made apple crumble from scratch 
(I cut up the apples and stewed them and
David made the crumble and baked it in our
little oven. It felt like an accomplishment.

Day 25: all day at Lake St Clair

We had a slow start and then mid morning we walked over to “lodge” and visitors centre. This was an interesting place—it had cabins and places to camp. But also a hostel. The front desk is staffed like a hotel, which gives an interesting air to it all. The lodge contains a restaurant and cafe, but no accommodation. There is also an information centre about the area. It’s the official end point of the Overland Track—a hike of about 80 km through wilderness. Usually takes about 6-8 days. There are a few huts along the way but they’re very basic shelters. 

Cuvier River, I think

We spent time reading stuff in the visitor information centre and then settled down to using the WiFi that comes with our stay. I worked especially on catching up about on this blog. 

Back to the van for lunch and then we set out on a hike for a couple of hours. Not a difficult one, though choosing the appropriate level of clothing was hard. We both ended up wearing too much too much (the nights and mornings have been cold).

I returned to the lodge for another hour of work on this blog and then it was dinner time. We had leftovers. I’m still amazed at how little effort is required to feed the two of us, and how small the amount of food is that we consume! After more than ten years of feeding teenage boys, it’s a bit of an adjustment!

Hugel River or Cuvier...not quite sure which

This was the first day we didn’t drive anywhere in a week. Most days have involved 2+ hrs of driving. It was wonderful to stay put for the day (and to be feeling really quite well). 

Walking near Lake St Clair

Amazing tall tree. Much of this
forest had been destroyed by fire a few years earlier,
but we suspected this one escape.

 

Lovely reflections on the lake.

Day 13: tourists in Canberra

On our last whole day in Canberra we did a self-guided walking tour. First we went to see a local doctor. I’d been experiencing pain in my jaw and wondered if it was an ear infection. Turned out I wasn't. The doctor thought TMJ (jaw joint) pain due to more teeth grinding than I usually engage in. He gave me pain killers and told me to eat softer food for a few days. I hoped that as we decompressed in the coming days the pain would subside.

We stopped for an early lunch because there was a nice little bakery near the doctor, then we walked and walked. In fact we did a lot of walking in Canberra. After struggling to find parking for the tall motorhome on our way in on Thursday, we decided we’d try not to use the vehicle to get around while we were there. It is a bit of a business to pack everything up to drive, so you could put it down to laziness…except that it meant we walked an average of four and a half kilometres a day during our five day stay.

After lunch we walked to Lake Burley Griffin, a major feature of the city, named after the couple who designed the city. The walk we took around the central portion of the lake included most of a path called the R G Menzies Walk, named in acknowledgement of Sir Robert Menzies, Australia’s longest serving prime minister, who played a large part in the development of the city and the lake. 

Lake Burley Griffin

We stopped along the route quite a few times, reading plaques, enjoying the view, admiring statues and flags, trees and memorials. Towards the end we found the National Capital Exhibition, a free museum, where we learned much about how Canberra came to be selected as Australia's national capital, the city's design, and development. The settlement was just a village when it was announced as the future capital in 1913, 12 years after Australia was declared its own country (Federation, 1 Jan, 1901). And parliament only started meeting in the city in 1927! The city’s design is the result of an international competition won by an American (and his wife). It’s fascinating to see evidence that Australia struggled for a long time to be confident in the cleverness of its own people: places like Canberra and the Sydney Opera House were designed by non-Aussies. This Australian characteristic is known as “cultural cringe”. Thankfully we’re growing out of that!

I picked up a brochure at the National Capital Exhibition about the walk and realised that we’d seen quite a lot of things in our slow wanderings. We saw:

• 
  Captain Jamies Cook Memorial—Cook is the British explorer who “claimed” Australia for the Brits.
• Blundell’s Cottage—build in 1860, well before Canberra was the capital.
  
• Australians of the Year Walk—plaques for each year, so many familiar names!
• International Flag Display—representing those nations that maintain a diplomatic presence in Canberra.
• Even a Japanese Cherry Tree grove presented to Australia by the Japanese Prime Minister in 1980. Nara, an ancient capital of Japan, is one of Canberra’s sister cities.

It was a good long meander. We stopped by St John the Baptist Anglican Church and their graveyard as we got close to "home". It’s a historical church that predates Canberra by a long way (consecrated in 1845). I was surprised to find a bamboo cross gifted to the church in 1950 by an Anglican Church in Japan. The cross is inscribed with the words Reconciliation and Repentance. It was given in relation to the members of the church who were killed by Japanese in New Guinea during the Pacific War. (Read more here)

We went back at night time for a couple more photos, because the church is beautifully lit at nighttime.

It was a good day, but I can’t deny that it was shrouded with some pain for me. Eating, in particular, had become painful. Before dinner I took two of the strong painkillers that were prescribed for me early in the day, which helped, but also caused nausea later and I didn’t manage to keep my dinner down. Of course the slight rocking of the motorhome doesn’t help at such times! So the day ended with me retiring to bed very quickly and with no desire to read at all (very unusual).

And that was our first day of long service leave. Not bad, but I can’t deny that I was keen to move on to somewhere a little less urban.

Day 3: a lake, three beaches, and a conference

Can you spot Lake Macquarie in the background?

This day we woke up in a caravan park on the shores of Lake Macquarie. A peaceful caravan park where we only encountered cheerful staff and residents. We're still adjusting to the change to daylight saving that we copped when we crossed the Queensland-New South Wales border on Wednesday (for non-Aussies, Queensland is the only state on the eastern side of Australia not to have daylight saving). The sun got up after 7. It was very weird to wake up at 6 am and find it was still dark!

Cave beach

We packed up and left by 10, and drove a short distance to Cave Beach, where, surprise surprise, there are caves on the beach! Alas the tide was coming in and we could only just get to one of them. The winds were high and the surf pretty fierce, but we walked along the beach for a bit anyway. Then, after it started raining, we hopped back in our vehicle and drove north a short distance, in search of a walk along the shoreline and found another beach (ingeniously called "Coastal") after a short walk through bushland. We then drove to a sheltered spot, read for a bit and made lunch in our portable home. 

Long Reef Headland in Collaroy

Then it was time to face the trip to Sydney. We were surprised by the Pacific Motorway to the north of Sydney. It goes through a lot of uninhabited mountainous area, with large portions of hills blasted away to accommodate the road. I looked it up later (I get travel sick, so I only get away with a minimal amount of reading as a passenger); I think much of the blasting happened in the 1920s, presumably when tunnel technology wasn't really a thing in Australia! In any case, the middle part of our journey was prettier than we'd anticipated.

Lunch in the motorhome

Driving in big cities you don't know is never fun and doing it in a larger vehicle makes it worse. Google Maps is a huge help, but it even got a bit lost at one point and gave us information that didn't match the signs in front of us, so we ended up in a tunnel that took us too far into the city! 

Around 3pm we did stop for caffeine as we got weary, but then powered onwards to the beachside suburb in northern Sydney of Collaroy. We were too early to check in, so we parked and went for a walk up the Long Reef Headland, which afforded beautiful views up and down the coastline, then walked down to the shoreline and back around to where we'd parked, touching the southern end of Fisherman's Beach. I walked a bit more than seven kilometres in the day, which is actually very good considering how tired I felt in the early part of the day!

Dinner was, of course, fish and chips, and then we drove to the conference centre and checked into our room. This is OMF Australia's annual national conference, something we only get to every five years or so. But I'll write more about this next time.

Splendid spring ride

I am pondering another deep post, but it's not fully written yet. In the meantime, I want to share with you some joy from my "romp" in the park today.

It's been my joy to ride to this park, and I've been doing it now for five-and-a-half years and am still so happy I made that discovery back in 2015.I haven't ridden there as often as I thought I might, but it's always worthwhile. Because I work from home, it's always good to get out, even to buy groceries. That's been even more the case in the last 13 months than in the past: I'm rarely getting out of the house during the day (aside from groceries and medical appointments). David and I are walking about three times a week, but that's usually after dark.

This time is my favourite time of year in Tokyo (April-May), the weather is often temperate and there are many, many flowers out. 

This is a small community garden I discovered last year. It was bursting with blooms.

Just outside one of the entrances to the park is a large business/home that flies a set of enormous carp flags at this time of year. It's for a traditional celebration of Children's Day in early May.

Entering the park at this time of year always takes my breath away. We don't live in as much of a concrete jungle as many imagine, but the overwhelming vibrancy of new green leaves as you enter the park gets me every time. Photos don't really capture the experience very well, unfortunately.

This park is full of wonderful mature trees like this.

I read a book for an hour with this view. It was delightfully serene much of the time. Thankfully I was pretty much ready to leave when the grass cutters started up nearby.

A particular attraction at this time in the year is the wisteria. We've got neighbours who have some of this hanging over several metres of their fence, but this is another level higher!

More trees!

On the way home I stopped at a fruit and veg store close to our station and took a road I don't normally travel. I found these radiant Bush lilies, that apparently love the shade (the road is between multi-storey buildings and doesn't get much sun).

This is all a part of a deliberate attempt to not just get exercise and enjoy the beautiful weather but do what Paul exhorted the Philippians to do:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (ch. 4 vs 8 , ESV).

 

Sport and transition

A fun option at the gym are these trampolines. Our youngest, particularly,
has enjoyed them. My neck is currently giving me some stick, but I'm
hoping I'll be able to give the trampolines a go soon.

Supporting our teens through this transition has been harder than perhaps we expected or you might realise.

One big thing we continue to struggle with is finding an appropriate outlet for our sporty boys. In Japan through the school it's built into the school year. Actually school-based sport there is quite intense, with practises most afternoons and competitions most Saturdays. When we take them out of that and into Australia it's a big misfit. Most sport seems to be private clubs, with only a little bit at school, but generally not starting in July and finishing in December! And of course as teenagers they are quite opinionated about what sport they'll do. We can't just throw them into cricket or rugby. They have no experience in either, and no interest in being newbies either.

And of course we've got one boy homeschooling, which includes no sport at all. The deal we agreed on with him when we said he could do homeschooling was that he got out and did some exercise. He's found that that was a harder thing to do than he anticipated.

Last time we were in Australia we tried to solve this sporting dilemma by having them all join a community wrestling club. It worked well for one or two of our boys, but not so well for the third. This time they are much more opinionated about what they want to do. 

We first tried an athletics club, which started out promisingly, but was a significant commitment as it was from 6.30-8 two nights a week about 20 minute drive from here. This was significant as I needed to work our meals around it and at least one of us needed to be plan to spend that time driving and being present. We were prepared to do all this. But we had a lot of trouble with this plan: especially with boy/s bailing at the last minute—either at home before we left, or once we got there. Some families might cope with this, but we didn't. It was upsetting and stressful for us all. We were prepared to go with the plan, but not if they couldn't make a solid commitment to doing it and the following through with that.

Plan B was to go to a local gym that is much closer to us, in fact we pass it on the drive to school. Not perfect, as it doesn't include much running, and that is really what our guys like to do, but it's flexible and we can do it at times that are much easier to manage (straight after school). David and I can also get involved here and get exercise ourselves.

So this is what we've been working with the last three weeks. Most days it's working, but not every time. We're paying per visit, rather than being locked in to a period of time.

Things will probably move up another level from October as our youngest plans to rejoin the wrestling club in preparation for joining the CAJ wrestling team in January when we return.

The stress of dealing with this is not something you might think about when thinking about the life of a missionary. It's been an element of this transition that's made it hard to feel settled as our lives are pretty lacking in routine anyway, and struggling to get a routine going for exercise has only added to the challenge.

A day off

It's been a crazy-busy week. Or should I say month or year? 

When people ask what we've been doing recently, they usually wonder if we're getting any rest. We've been working hard to get ourselves all set-up for ministry and life here, that always takes a lot more time and emotional energy than you expect. And last week I really didn't get much of a break, and it was followed by a weekend away at my parents and speaking at a church in their city—a very people-filled weekend. Then yesterday I had a five-hour Skype meeting with my magazine team in Japan. All good, important stuff, but tiring.

This morning I woke up feeling blurry.

The range of emotions I've been experiencing also include: inadequate, out of control, and off balance. Some of that is related to the busyness, some is related to parenting, and some is just trying (and at times failing) to find new rhythms that work for these six months. It's not really surprising that this extrovert-with-a-strong-introvert shadow, who's had little "me" time (or reflection time) recently is feeling this way.

Today there was nothing on the schedule, and with no designated ministry opportunities for nearly two weeks, we've got a small breathing space. 

So today, I stopped. 

I stopped answering email—though that in itself is a stress, knowing that there are emails to answer, people who are waiting to hear from me. 

I stopped doing Japanese study—yes, I'm still working on that and it is a definite stressor as it doesn't end. I can have no reviews left when I go to bed and find 100 waiting for me when I get up. I'm also still catching up from the break I took for a month while we relocated.

I stopped. And lay on my bed for the morning, reading and playing addictive phone games. As it was a school day I didn't get to sleep-in, but I did get that on Saturday.

This afternoon I got up again and "went". We went to a local gym. Getting some kind of exercise routine going for our family, especially for our home-schooling 15 year old, has been a stressor that we've despaired at solving. It was good to get him out and good for David and I to work out too. Maybe this is the light at the end of that tunnel! We went to the library too, so hopefully I'm fuelled up with some more reality-escaping fiction to relax with at nights.

I like coming back to this convenient kitchen
appliance. In Japan I use a hand-held mixer,
it is fun to have this here to use when we're back.

When we got home I baked. I'm continuing a challenge I gave myself in our last home assignment: that is, to bake my way through a small Australian recipe book I picked up in 2014. It's theme is chocolate and most recipes use at least one ingredient that is hard to get in Japan, so it's fun to do this here. So I baked a Hazelnut Mud Cake. 

I also baked an old favourite: Honey Biscuits (aka Stamp Biscuits), as one boy was complaining about the snacks he'd been receiving in his lunchbox and hankering after some good-old home cooking by mum. Baking takes energy, but is also relaxation for me, so it was good to have the time and energy to do it.

Now I'm writing, processing it all.

All that adds up to a pretty good day off. I'm definitely feeling better than I have for a few days.

Here's hoping that, for a few months at least, I'll be able to balance my weeks a bit better!

Seeking balance in my daily life

Me and exercise
I'm sitting here in an after-exercise glow, something that's been too rare in recent years. I know that exercise is essential for me, it helps me with stress, with staying focused, and with my general energy levels. 

But I've struggled in these last three years to get a regular routine going. For several years I was a member of Curves and went two or three times a week. Then we went to Australia in 2014 and regular exercise came in the form of riding hilly territory to school with the boys each day (about seven ks).  I also learnt how to use a "real" gym. While our boys did wrestling twice a week, I worked out downstairs in the sport's centre's weights and bike/cross trainee machine rooms.

Then we returned to Japan where:
1. The boys walk 300m to school, without needing my supervision.
2. We weren't waiting 1 ½ hours for boys to finish wrestling training twice a week in a gym 30 minutes from our home.

So, what was I to do? And for various reasons I didn't want to go back to Curves.

A photos I took on one of my park rides.

I wrote about my big "revelation" in October 2014 here. I would ride to the big park 5km south of here. 

It's something that I've continued to do, but not as regularly as I really needed to (I managed it less than ten times in 2017). Part of that is that it took more time out of my day that I could often afford to take. Especially because I often added in other elements: photography (when I acquired a fancy camera in mid 2016), shopping, even a picnic, and or a coffee shop at times. That park is just a 30 min ride away, but usually I'd be away three or more hours. I did do some other rides: to another park more than twice as far a coupe of times and also rode a few times to a coffee shop a few suburbs over. So, it is still a good thing to do, but not really "regular" enough.

It is true that exercise is integrated into my week: I ride usually twice a week to get groceries. It isn't a long or hard ride, but still it is a ride. Walking and stair-climbing happens too, but rather irregularly if I'm going somewhere on the trains for work or to watch the boys compete.

I asked a friend to orientate me to the local public gym and I liked it there. It is pay-as-you-use, as opposed to being locked into a monthly payment. It's also a lot cheaper than either gym I'd previously used. Trouble was, again, I struggled to get there regularly.

Me and headaches During the year in Australia ('14/'15) I spent time seeing a physio for a couple of issues, one of which was seeking to get to the bottom of my ongoing struggle with headaches. I have to admit that I do hesitate to write about this, because every time I mention it to people, they've got lots of advice. Really, I have a few main triggers that I've discerned over the years, with muscle tension and low blood sugar being two major ones.

In the midst of the above I found that I was getting nasty headaches after I went to the gym—every time! Well that didn't help my motivation to go. So I tried various combinations of things around the gym times: hydration, regulating my breathing while lifting, being extra careful about my posture, eating. 

I even went several months of recording my headaches and possible triggers. One thing stood out, one time that I went to the gym and didn't get a headache: I met a friend for coffee straight after I went to the gym and I didn't get a headache that day at all. Aha: maybe caffeine is a key, I thought.

Me and coffee
When I was at language school (and still drinking instant coffee) I discovered that not only do I need to eat regularly to avoid headaches, I need to "caffeinate" regularly, or more precisely, "on time". My reaction was to stop drinking coffee for breakfast, leaving the caffeine to later in the day. That seemed to work for a time. A few years later I decided to get off caffeinated coffee altogether. I became a "social drinker": only drinking caffeinated coffee when I was out. That also seemed to work for a time. But the trouble was, I got more "social" and ended up drinking caffeinated coffee more often than occasionally. Headaches continued.

It was frustrating. The physio in Australia suggested I have regular massages when I returned to Japan to help regulate my muscle tension and headaches and I have (I also hesitate to mention that, because it seems like such a luxury). But the headaches remained. The massages did get me some more built-in exercise, as I deliberately chose to go to one a bit further away that I could ride to.

Anyway, to cut a meandering story short (I learned today that there's a French word for this: "Bref" or "you get the idea")—I decided I would need to cut out coffee altogether, even for social occasions. But quite I've grown to love coffee and especially I love coffee shops atmosphere. I also love "meeting a friend for coffee". So, cutting it out altogether, especially in a land where they don't yet do decaf coffee very well (though it is much more available than it used to be), this wasn't an appealing option.

Instead, I decided to manipulate my caffeine intake the other way. Instead of trying not to have caffeine each day, I would plan on having at least one cup every morning (usually around 9.30). I've been doing this for a few weeks now and it does seem to be working. I'm not stressing if I have to have more coffee in a day and generally I think I've had less headaches. I'm happy with that outcome!

Back to my post-exercise glow today. It seems like it's all finally come together: regular exercise routine and headache modulation. These last couple of weeks I've done this twice a week:

• gone to the gym on the mornings that I grocery shop (the gym and the shop are in the  same direction from my house)
• had coffee before I went to the gym
• taken a small snack to eat after working out, but before I leave the gym
• eating an early lunch when I get home

This routine seems to work and I've had no headaches on those days. There are two big problems with it, though.

1. It only works if I have a morning free to do both the gym and groceries.

2. We're about to go to Australia for six months, where I won't be riding to the grocery store  twice a week.

I guess I'll have to keep plugging away at finding ways to keep myself active. But hopefully I'll be able to keep most of the headaches at bay!

A day out and some more

On Friday the weather was dry (unlike most of the week) and I was well, so I loaded up my bike and took off for the day.

I first rode to my favourite park, my first ride there in more than four months. I find the first thing to go out of my life when I'm busy is exercise and alas I've done little exercise since January. So it was great to be out, and in lovely temperatures too (mid teens).

I was disappointed to find that the majority of the cherry blossoms weren't out, a few early bloomers were, and they were wonderful, but only constituted about five trees.

I love the blue sky! Reminds me of Australia. Look at these buds just about to burst out of their winter confinement.

What caption is needed? This is a type of cherry blossom, though not the most famous version.

I think these are almost my favourites. Their colour is so vibrant compared
to the famous cherry blossom, and they bloom a bit earlier.

I've got no idea what this is, but there was just a single bush.

This looks a bit like a relative of the Australian wattle.

I didn't so so great at getting the right angle on these either, but they
were quietly blooming in the semi-shade.

After the park, I kept going, stopping for lunch in a little community park and then on to a coffee shop. There I pulled out my computer and worked on a couple of articles that were promising to be a couple of the harder ones on my current to-do list, and the sorts of jobs that are easy to procrastinate on. My strategy was to sit there till I'd decently tackled them. I left there feeling pretty satisfied with the work I'd been able to get done.

Then I reversed my journey, though it was getting late and some dark clouds had come over, so I didn't go back to the park. I still had grocery shopping at two different stores to do, so I stopped at one on the way home. Then rode home, unloaded the bike and went to the second store. I was happy to have pretty comfortably ridden nearly 20km.

I had the added challenge of extracting my bike from this jam in the free bike park (pay for parking and you get a better
experience!).

It was great to get out. It enabled crossed off several things that give me joy:

• a ride on a day with some blue sky
• the park
• photography
• a coffee shop
• crossing things off my to do list

Yesterday was spent at an athletics meet, another great day out (warmer weather than last week). 

Today was church, then I rode the long way home, searching for more blooms to capture (but not with my big camera). 

I love the apparent wild abandon of this early bloomer. Not a cherry blossom.

After lunch we spent a pleasurable hour chatting with our eldest. Then some rest, reading. 

And now it's preparation for four days away in Hokkaido at our mission's national conference. I'll see what time I get for mobile blogging while we're away. Maybe once or twice?

Big park fun

Several weeks ago we looked at the Christmas break, a three-week holiday, and decided to include a big get-us-out-of-the-house outing after Christmas and NYE. The parks that our teenage-family can visit these days and have fun have decreased in number and increased in size (and distance from our house). One park we knew our boys could have fun in is called Shinrin Park. It is a large park an hour drive from our house and a bit of a blast from the past. We were introduced to the park by a friend I met when my 15 y.o. was at kindergarten! We've been here a handful of times, but  not since 2011 (with visiting Australian friends, who wrote a guest post that included a mention of the park here).

Location of the park from our city.

We decided that it would be even more fun to invite some other families with teenagers. Actually it's a good strategy for entertaining teenagers, invite their friends! That part of the expedition got a little out of control, but we ended up with three other families and nearly 20 people to enjoy the day with.

The flaw in the plan was that in order to get the most out of the day (it is such a large park that it takes a whole-day to enjoy it), we needed to leave early. Especially considering the temperatures these days. Once it hits mid-afternoon (around 3) temperatures start to dip and the sun goes down soon after 4.30. But actually the park shut at 4 anyway. So, in order to get there in time, we needed to get the nocturnal teenagers up for an 8.30 leave. They've been staying up really late recently and the early rise wasn't appreciated. I think one got about four hours sleep that night.

The main strategy for enjoying the park is to hire bikes in the park and ride between the various attractions. It has 17 km of riding paths, I rode 15 km of them.

Here are some photos from the day. In the northerly part of the park we found this dragon head.

And a lot of lights, unfortunately not so attractive at this time of the day (apparently these are accessible after dark, but we're not quite sure how as the park in general shut before dark).

Pretty cool looking dragon/Loch Ness?

A section of the bikeways. They are wide and smooth, great fun for riding on. But strangely the whole park is "ride on the right side"! Very odd for a country that drives on the left.

The view from the northerly part of the park.

This was the main attraction for the bigger kids (we had ten kids with us, ranging from 7 to 18 in age). Huge trampoline-hills. Unlike most of these sorts of attractions we've found in Japan, there is no age limit (so even I could jump on it). It was so funny that when I first hopped on I had comments from our kids: "I can't believe you're doing this!" But I've always loved trampolines and these are soooo much fun.

A fun place for wrestling. (No photo evidence, but I actually did a little bit of wrestling with our eldest too.)

Or balancing (these were the oldest and youngest of our kids).

 And more rumbling.

A bigger view. We ate lunch at the white dome place on the right. It was concreted and covered in artificial grass. The sun had warmed the concrete and proved to be a lovely place to sit. Thankfully this place was fairly protected. The day's temperature was around 10 degrees, which was okay if you were dressed warmly and kept moving (and stayed out of the sneaky breeze). One fun memory for me was sitting on the heaving trampoline with some of the kids and comparing how many layers we were wearing (one had two pairs of long johns!). We spent a few hours here.

Part of the walk into the trampoline mountains from the bike path. It would be fun to come back sometime without kids and hike around in the park away from the bike paths, especially in April or May when the temperatures are mild and spring is coming to life. There's so much of the park that we've never seen.

After the trampolines we went to the 24-part obstacle course. It is a little easy for our high schoolers, but still everyone found something fun to do.

Late in the day, the sun was disappearing. This pond had a thin layer of ice on some of its surface.

The other two mums who joined us, soldiering up another hill. Actually we were a little low of females. Nine boys, one girl, four dads, and three mums (though illness was why we didn't have four mums).

It was a fun day. We'd never been in winter and, while it isn't so pretty, it is much more doable. We've previously been in mid-summer and when the temperature is in the mid 30sC and humidity pushing into the 80s or 90s, it is hard to summons the energy to enjoy the whole park. Although there is a free water play feature that younger children really enjoy and make those conditions bearable.

It was also a great choice to invite friends. Most of us had more fun than we would have if we'd just gone as a single family unit.