Celebrating 10 years of camping in Japan

 I realised this afternoon that last week was the 10 year anniversary of our very first Japan camping trip (which was actually our first camping trip on our own). I wrote a blog post about that first camping trip: http://mmuser.blogspot.com/2011/07/our-camping-adventure.html

It’s fascinating to look back and remember the journey. Our boys were 6, 8, and 12 on that first trip and they loved it (though were thoroughly exhausted by it). Opinions have changed over the years and only two still enjoy camping.

Last year’s summer camp

Camping also looks a lot different with older teenagers. For starters, camping just with us is too boring, so for the last couple of years we’ve been including their friends, and that’s added another fun dimension.

For the first five years or so, we mostly just camped as a family, but since then we’ve camped a lot with others, particularly one family who lives close to us. It’s been fun to share the camping fun with them, and share the meal-preparation (and clean-up) side with them too. And camping with Americans also means S’mores!

This last 18 months of pandemic I’ve had very little opportunity to spend face-to-face time with people outside my family. Camping has been one way to stay connected to at least a couple of our friends.

In those ten years we’ve also done two camping tours. We toured Hokkaido and also the central part of Honshu (as far south/west as Kyoto and Wakayama Prefecture). Both times we camped continuously for about two weeks, but only staying in each campsite one to three nights. David and I loved those trips, the boys, not so much.

I probably should stop and count how many camping trips we’ve been on, but we’re in the midst of preparing for another one tomorrow, so I’ll leave that for another day. 

The main reason we began camping ten years ago was a realisation that we’d been in Japan for ten years already and seen very little of this beautiful country. It’s not easy to see Japan on a budget with a family, but camping was one way to do it. We’re also more small-town/country kids than we are big-city kids, and we’re not particularly into tourism or shopping, so exploring Japan’s countryside was appealing. 

You might think that we are great outdoorsy people. We are not. Both David and I burn easily and don’t particularly love hiking. I was pondering earlier this year why camping has been so appealing to us (besides being able to see different parts of Japan and to get out of the city) and I think it’s partly because both of us love problem solving. Camping is full of opportunities to problem solve and we enjoy the challenge. We’ve also found that camping so fully occupies your mind that just a few days away can feel like many more, so it’s actually a pretty efficient way to take a break.

Anyway, if you’ve followed my blog for any length of time you will know about our camping trips. We’re excited about embarking on another one tomorrow, but we’re hoping that it will be cooler at the campsite than it is here (the car’s thermometer read 35 degrees C when parked in the shade at 5pm this afternoon, and the humidity was something like 80%). We’re camping near a stream, so hopefully we’ll be able to cool off pretty easily.