Today's picnic

Part of our picnic mat. In Japan picnic mats are almost always plastic.

Today we dropped our youngest son off at an English summer camp for middle schoolers run by some local missionaries. It is the the third of the series of camps where our eldest son is a leader (US = counsellor). The camp is held at a campsite owned by SEND International and is towards the western tip of Tokyo. It's close to where we did our first two camping trips way back in 2011. There are 80 campers there until Thursday. We're praying for those tired leaders and cooks and maintenance staff!

This pink area is Tokyo "prefecture". We live at the purple arrow, we drove out
to the red arrow today.

Our son was due at camp at 2pm, so we decided to leave early and have a picnic at Tama River. It's the river that comes from Tama Dam, part of Tokyo's water supply. A gorgeous place that's not all that far from us (though it does take between 1 ½ to 2 hours to get there). The river runs very close to the campsite.

Alas, I forgot my "big" camera. But the iPhone isn't too bad. We went for a stroll after lunch, stopping at
promising spots to climb on rocks.

Middle son, foiling my attempt at taking his photo. He
has many good memories of this part of Tokyo, having
been to a few camps there himself.

As well as climbing, skipping rocks was a popular pastime for a bit.

On the way home we treated ourselves to afternoon tea at a coffee shop. It's nice to just have one boy at home for a bit, much less expensive. We're thinking it's be a little holiday-like here at home this week.