Summer holidays 2021

Well, we've been back nearly a week now and it's time to do some reminiscing and show you some "slides" from our time away. I didn't feel the slightest bit like writing while I was gone (though I didn't have a keyboard with me, so that was a significant deterrent for sure!). 

My days were spent in rotating between reading and eating, walking and sleeping, watching movies and doing puzzles, playing games and picking up cross-stitch again. It's truly amazing how much time can be spent on relaxing, non-work activities. 

We came back to Tokyo last weekend feeling very relaxed. I'm the only one properly back at work (David has one toe in the door, checking email and doing the odd task).

It was a great time to decompress. I thought I was doing okay before we left, except that my body was starting to tell me, in various ways, that it was time to take a break. It was hard to walk away, but so needed. We've had a rough year. It was especially great to take time away from making decisions. We'd deliberately set aside some pressing concerns until "after holidays" and we're seeing positive results from that now. Intentionally not talking about some things has given the space to think and process and make decisions that were too hard when we were stressed.

We definitely view ourselves as marathon runners in this work in Japan (and not particularly fast runners at that). If we're going to last the distance, we need to pace ourselves, and regular time away from work is an important part of that.

I'm glad to say that our "summer" isn't over yet. Not that I'm totally enjoying the heat (Tokyo's summer is oppressive and our house has poor insulation), but that the summer vibe in the house prevails, despite me spending office hours at my desk. Last night we went out for dinner and a movie (Black Widow). In a couple of weeks we're going camping for three nights. No school schedule is really nice! But I'm a bit sad that I'm not getting so much time to read . . . I read 11 books while we were away and it was awesome!

Anyway, here are a few tastes of the great outdoors from our holidays:

The front "gate". Yep, after Tokyo, it's very green.

Tiny "false" strawberry in the wild.

This is the mountain whose slopes we were situated on. We rarely saw it, though, it was cloudy 
much of the time. These fields, though, we feasted our eyes on all day long.

We were there in the middle of the rainy season, so there were lots of fun mushroom to find.

Putting my phone close to the ground, with the lens at the bottom,
I was able to see up under the mushrooms.

One day we drove 30 min north to Karuizawa, a popular summer retreat for the rich in Japan.
We almost always visit this outlet mall. It's a sprawling, luxurious place, with it's own lake and 
lawns. We caught it on a foggy day. Our purpose was finding sneakers in a larger size than you
can usually find in a Japanese store (for our tall teenager).

We happened upon this overgrown lookout while walking one day.
It wasn't well cared for, but had this interesting, and functional, water feature.

Venturing up the mountain, we walked this quiet, but well-maintained road.
It was blissfully quiet.

And yes, our usual haunt: the local park, with its park golf course. We spent three sessions here.

Another mushroom!

Green rice fields are beautiful (green being my favourite colour). We don't often get
close to them on foot, so when we walked past this one, I stopped for some photos.

In the cool of the mountains, the hydrangeas were still blooming, even as our Tokyo
ones were wilting in the heat.

Oh, and you can't have too many mushroom photos, can you?

Park ride

I did end up riding to the park today, but kept it to a short visit and didn't do too many things on my ride home (I often do some shopping or go to a coffee shop). It's very green now! Absolutely gorgeous.

This week is called Golden Week as it holds several public holidays. One of which is Children's Day. There are these Carp "flags" up all over Japan to commemorate. These were huge (note the people under the flagpole).

There were a lot of school groups in the park. And other groups too (riding past the BBQ section was a bit agonising). Here we have a lot of backpacks waiting for their owners to stop playing. Squatting on the left of the photo is the "caretaker" of the backpacks. I'm guessing that each class had one tree. Later they would be coming back to have a picnic.

Ah, fresh, spring green! Love it!

Tokyo's unexpected green tinge

In this huge metropolis that's one and half times the population of my home country, it amazes me how much green there is. There seems to be a compulsion to grow stuff in the smallest of places. Tiny garden beds seem to be regularly included on the side of houses or built into property walls these days (not so much in the older buildings like our house). 

Here's a house we've driven past quite a lot on the way back from cross-country meets these last few weeks. They've got a tree growing in that tiny garden! Plus something that looks like it could be a bonsai plant on the other side of the front door.

Of course not everyone has a green thumb (for example, yours truly, who mostly only grows geraniums because they are really hard to kill). Some of the garden beds seem to be wishful thinking: put in at entrances that are on the northern side of a building, and hence get almost no sun except in mid-summer. One building near us must have had pine trees planted there when it was built, on the north side of the building. We've watched them gradually die and finally, fall over into the street.

I passed this house on the way to Costco a couple of weeks ago. No one's grabbed the opportunity of that garden bed, but at least it's not overflowing with weeds.

I found this small ornamental chilli bush in full "bloom" on my way to the doctor last month. I passed it again yesterday and it wasn't looking so healthy. But I want to include the photo as an example of the little bits of nature that lie all around us here. This bush is in a long raised garden bed in, essentially, the central business area of our suburb. In the background you can see another one (which had mostly weeds at the time). These public areas are generally looked after by local citizen groups, who often have work days where they get out and tidy up, often planting annuals.

It's not what fits my mind's eye with what a big city will look like. 

Excitement at cross country today

Here I am with Jenn, a friend, fellow parent, and editing-team member.

Today was the second cross-country meet of the season. I felt weary when the alarm went off at 5.15 this morning! The reward was that we zoomed through Tokyo in our van and got to our destination in only about 45 minutes (it took longer than an hour to drive the 15km home, much of that was at less than 10km/hr).

But being at the meet was well worth the effort. We saw all three of our boys run. The two who'd run this course before got significant personal best times (66 and 33 seconds)! The third boy, our new middle schooler, obviously hadn't run the course before, but was only 30 seconds behind his 8th grade brother. They ran so well. One proud mum here!


The other great thing, that I've mentioned many times before, was chatting with other parents. This is something I missed when we were in Australia. Inter-school events didn't include much parental support (probably because many of them were during the working day). Plus I hadn't spent long enough in the school community to get to know many other parents.

Today I probably chatted with more than a dozen people who I know (some barely, others much better). For someone like me who works alone, but also needs people, that was soul refreshing. 

I also ran into a new family at CAJ. I met the mum about 10 years ago when she and her husband, who were cross-cultural workers in the middle east at the time, spoke at our church in Japan. We met in the babies room! We've since spent time together at various inter-mission women's events here in Japan, but not for over two years. So great to see her again. She introduced me to her husband who knew my face from my photo, which appears under my editorial in Japan Harvest magazine these days. He thanked me for my ministry.

My husband wasn't nearby at that time, but later I told him about this family and their daughter in high school. He said, "I teach her." Ah ha. Yes, we are in Japan serving the missionary community. Though it's always in the back of our minds, it's good to be reminded of that "in the flesh" sometimes.

I didn't quite get my "fancy" camera settings right for the middle
school race, but this has its own kind of charm. This is our middle son
who came 19th in a field of over 100 runners.

And our youngest who was 29th in the same race as above. This black-and-yellow
runner came up behind him with only about five metres left, but our son
didn't have enough in the tank, proving to me that this ultra competitive boy
had indeed run very hard today. He would have been 4th if the race just contained 6th graders.

Gorgeous greenery to be had in this location.

The start of the middle school race. 

Photos from a special garden in Kanazawa

When we were in Kanazawa we visited a garden that is rated in the top three beautiful landscape gardens in Japan, Kenrokuen. It is very old and used to be the outer garden of Kanazawa Castle. They're not sure how old, but probably it was begun in the 1600s. Nearly the whole garden was destroyed in 1759 in a fire. In fact this is a common story we heard as we traipsed around historical sights: things destroyed in fires or earthquakes.

We foreigners find Japanese history quite intimidating because it is so long and complex. Similarly the history of this garden. But I'm going to take a stab at giving you a taste. Four hundred years is a long time and many people have made many changes to the garden in that time. But it was formed and developed during the Edo period (1603-1868) by the local feudal lords.

This is an unusual two-legged lantern, is a signature piece in this garden (most lanterns have just one leg).

The ruling family in the area was the Maeda clan. They were one of the most powerful (and wealthy) samurai families in Japan and became daimyo (powerful feudal lords who ruled a large territory in Japan) during the Edo period. When you read about the garden you see the "fifth lord Maeda Tsunanori" who, in 1676, moved the garden house to the castle. He apparently started landscaping the garden that has become Kenrokuen. He also established three divine islands in the pond.

The "11th lord Harunaga" who restored the garden after the above mentioned fire.

See Kanazawa on the left towards the top of this map.
Tokyo being towards the bottom right.

The 12th lord extended the garden, adding some winding streams and build a villa. At the completion of the villa the garden was renamed, taking on its current name which embodies six attributes of a perfect landscape garden, according to a gardening book written by Li Gefei, a famous Chinese poet. The name of the garden means "Garden of the six sublimities" referring to spaciousness, seclusion, artificiality, antiquity, abundant water, and broad views.

The 13th lord planed a pine tree, taking seed from a place near Lake Biwa. It's now very old and I'm sure it was one of the pines we saw with many poles propping up its limbs. 

One of the things I came away with was a greater appreciation of how much Japanese people revere history. In one place there was a two-foot stump poking out of the ground. It had a sign on it explaining how it was one of the oldest trees in the garden, but it had rotted away just a few years ago. I'm doubting that it's stump would have been honoured like this in many western countries, including my own.

The garden wasn't open to the public until 1874. Entry was free for many years, but in recent times they've charged for entry to help pay for the upkeep, it doesn't surprise me. It looked so picture perfect everywhere, I imagine it takes a whole team of gardeners to maintain it.

Moss is also an essential in a Japanese garden (the Japanese national anthem apparently includes the word "moss"). I love its lush green. What you can see below is not grass, but moss. Hmmm, maybe I could start my own inside moss garden...apparently in this humid climate it isn't hard.

There are many more photos and explanations here. I truly now wish I'd read up about the garden more before we went. It was hard to appreciate all the history. It's much more than just a park, like a 25 acre piece of art, pretty much everything has an intended meaning or detailed history. It was hard to know where to look, because every view was amazing.

I wish that I'd had my camera working properly. All my photos were underexposed because of a setting that I'd messed up. I'd also love to go back in a different season (though the green was lovely) and take more time to explore. The boys did really well, but it surely isn't their forte, exploring historical, beautiful gardens! But they did have some fun:

Settling back at home

Today begins five and a half weeks of the rest of the school holidays. The stay-at-home part of the holidays. We did the vast majority of our unpacking and putting away of camping stuff yesterday afternoon, after arriving here at 4pm. Living in a small house without spare, covered outdoor space means that it's best if we don't just leave things lying around. Our habit is to unpack as soon as possible after arriving home. David's been washing clothes and sleeping bags and other stuff all day, it's good drying weather.

I've been playing catch-up at my desk. Catching up with many magazine and mission things that need to be done early this week. Getting my head back in the game. Which isn't as hard as it usually is because I've been checking email and tracking with at least part of the magazine over the time we were away. I usually guard my time-off better than that, but this time it was unavoidable as we tried to get the Spring issue of the magazine out before the end of July (summer)! However it's had the effect of meaning that it hasn't been so hard to get back into work today. I'll just have to remember to get some rest at other times (not having to get people to school and work by 8/8.30 will help, though).

Putting this here as a reminder of all the green we saw.
These are rice plants and I've never seen so many in Japan
before. I guess I've not travelled so much in the country at
this time ever before. I never get tired of looking at this
amazing green!

For breaks between work today I've been downloading and editing photos from our trip. Some really nice photos and memories! Though it's a pity I was still learning how to use the camera as I went, because some photos would have been a lot better if I'd had the right settings on the camera.

It's a bit quieter here than usual this week as our eldest has gone to a high school summer camp, he left early this morning and won't be back till Saturday evening. I'll have to remember not to cook so much food!

I'm not particularly enjoying Tokyo's humidity, though it's not so hot today (only around 30C), it feels oppressively humid (70/80%). Probably, though, by the end of the summer I will have acclimatised and won't be bothered so much. Last night it barely cooled at all, sticking around the high 20s all night, so I was up much early than I would have preferred.

Some people were concerned that we'd be too hot camping, but we really weren't. There were a couple of hot nights, but mostly we were up on mountains or next to water with a breeze. Plus there was lots of rain, which tends to hold the heat in check. Kyoto had been hot, but the day we were there it was rainy and pleasantly cool. There was only one night that I didn't pull the sleeping bag up a little over me at some point in the night (we slept on sheets and used the sleeping bag as a blanket).

Where are you staying?

The last 24 hours have been better. I got rest yesterday afternoon and evening (skipped out on some of the programme, but shhh, don't tell anyone). I also slept better last night, though I did go to bed with a headache. I've had better conversations today, too, life-giving conversations rather than the other kind. 

This hotel is in a hot springs area (Jozankei) and is situated in a green valley and makes great use of that. You can see green from most windows. The dining room, especially. I love it.

The dining room is two stories high with windows from floor to ceiling along two of the four sides. 

This was taken from our table at lunch down to the adjacent river. 

The top large windows here are the dining room. Directly underneath is the indoor water park. Our boys spent several hours there yesterday. 

The view from my bed!

I'll take some internal photos at the hotel to show you tomorrow and maybe you can help me with words to describe the decor, however here is one of the more tasteful decorations (in one of the restrooms).