What're you doing over the summer?

There are only 18 school days left for my kids. So we're getting this question.

In Australia it is usually framed, "Are you doing anything over Christmas?" or "Are you going away in the holidays (US=vacation)?" Because, of course, summer coincides with Christmas and New Year in Australia so "Christmas" has a broad meaning usually including holidays and often going away somewhere.

In an international environment the question gets ramped up a bit, "Are you going back home over the summer?" This is much bigger, because it involves an expensive aeroplane trip, not just loading up the family car. And "over the summer" is the usual phrase. We don't say that in Australia, it seems to be an American phrase.

It makes for a good conversation opener, but recently we've been asked this a lot and it can be tiresome. And the answer is "No, we're not flying back home to Australia." Often I am talking to someone who has fewer family members than I. When I point out how expensive it is to take a family of five on an aeroplane trip to Australia they quickly understand why we might be staying put this summer. Besides which, this is the first May in three years when we haven't been planning to change countries in a month or so. I'm very happy to not be doing some major packing right now!

So what are we planning?

I mentioned back here on January 1 what our summer plans were.  We're planning to do some camping. And we're thinking of buying a family yearly pass to a "somewhat" local water/amusement park. Trying to think "cool".

There is one other event we're looking forward to, and that is having some friends visit for a fortnight in June/July. It's been a long time since we've had people come to Japan just to see us. Our friends have two young children about the same age as our own, so it should be a fun, crazy time. Over the weekend I wrote out a rough schedule for the two weeks they'll be here. Phew - I think we'll need a holiday to get over the holiday! We're going to try to cram a lot of stuff in. Museums, lots of parks, trains, a volcano, waterfalls, the Imperial Palace and Tokyo Metropolitan building (202m observation platform) and maybe even Tokyo Disney.

It should be fantastic fun. They've never been to Japan before, so we're playing the tour operators. It will be nice to have an excuse to play tourists. Anyone noticed that in a place where you live you don't do the touristy stuff unless you have visitors or make a special effort?

So, in case you're thinking of asking me "the question", you already know my answer and we can move onto more important things like..."How are you really?"