October camping trip 2026

Lake Inawashiro at sunset

Last week we spent four days camping in the Fukushima Prefecture next to the fourth largest lake in Japan: Lake Inawashiro (for the record, we've now seen three of the four largest, and camped next to two of them, this one and Lake Biwa). It is about 280 km north of us in Tokyo.

Rice fields being harvested as we drove north.

We stopped at an expressway service area
and ate traditional "Service Area food".
David accidentally ordered the largest dish on
the menu. All this for about AU$25. There was
more rice here than the two of us would eat in
a single meal. He didn't finish it all!

We drove up on Tuesday, with our usual camping friends, though for only the second time of camping together we had no kids camping with us. When we arrived it was pretty windy and I was having flashbacks to our most recent camping trip where we ended up going home a day early because our camping set-up was overwhelmed with wind and rain on the second night. We were very careful about the angle that we set up our tent, trying to protect the pole that got damaged in March. But thankfully the wind started to die down as the sun set and it never picked up again through our whole stay.

So much space in our little car!

Kebabs on our surprisingly spacious
portable fire pit.

Wednesday was a pretty quiet day. It rained in the morning and was cloudy and cool all day. We strolled around the large campsite (100+ sites) and enjoyed gazing at the lake and spent time reading after lunch. 

After our last trip we threw away our cheap little wood fire stove and bought a brand-new higher quality portable fire pit. We had a lot of fuel with us, so we ended up playing with fire most of the day. It was relaxing and a great "circuit breaker" to help us get into relaxing mode. Dinner was chicken kebabs and fire-roasted veggies followed by Apple Crisp cooked over the fire! (Fire and food cooked over the fire is the best thing about camping, we don't starve!)

Moss!

This impressive plant is called
"Jack-in-the-pulpit".

Moody lake views.

Thursday dawned bright and sunny. Our friend Mark, had, as usual, brought his bike and prepared to ride all the way around the lake. His ride ended up being about 60 kilometres. As is common in this country, at times the mountains descended straight into the lake, so the road wasn't at water-level all the way around so he had a fair bit of climbing to do, and contrary to what seems logical, he tells us he had a headwind the whole way!

While Mark was off riding, the rest of us walked around a large park across the road from the campsite. After lunch, we met Mark at a tourist farm for ice cream and then all convened back at the campsite. The evening meal was all about the fire again, and we enjoyed campfire-cooked pizza (using a base made on location from flour, baking powder, water, and then after we loaded the toppings, it was folded into foil for cooking) followed by American S'mores. We're so happy with our new fire pit!

Our location had lots of trees. 

Ice cream :D

Mossy wall in the park

Autumn leaves

So many dragon flies! Hard to photograph,
but they were everywhere around us.

Autumn leaves, blue sky, and Mount Daisan (1,729m)

Our friends brought solar-charged fairy lights, which made our
basic setup kinda pretty. Hard to take a photo of, though.

Thursday night was pretty chilly and to stay warm, I wore most of the clothes that I had on during the day to bed. We ended up in bed really early and got up late due to the chill, such is the camping life!

On Friday we packed up our camp and headed to an nearby tourist spot: a Japanese castle. Actually the real castle was demolished in 1874, but the outside of the tower was rebuilt in 1965. Inside the tower is a (mostly) bilingual museum which told us some of the history of the castle and the area. The castle has stood on this location since the 1500s! It was again humbling to learn just a tiny bit of this nation's complex and long history. It continues to fascinate me at the same time as boggling my mind!

Tsuruga Castle (aka Aizuwakamatsu 
Castle or Wakamatsu Castle)

Then, after a short stop for lunch bought from a convenience store, we turned our cars towards home. It was all going well until we encountered a 15km traffic jam on the expressway that took a couple of hours to clear away (caused by a truck being on fire). We didn't get home until after 7pm. But unlike our last trip, at least we were in the open (not in tunnels) and we'd had a good sleep the night before. We were also thankful that no rain fell on our last two days, so we didn't have much cleanup to do once we got home. 

I'm so thankful that we decided to go the "camping route" 15 years ago. We've seen much more of Japan than we otherwise would have. We also frequently note that the act of camping creates a kind of weird time warp. Four days away feels like much more, mostly because when tent camping you have to focus more on daily living, like making fire, keeping dry/warm, ensuring the tent stays up, etc. It takes your mind away from the things that usually occupy our minds at home.

Our next touring adventure is only a couple of months away. It will be cooler so we won't take our tents, but instead plan to make use of the little rustic cabins that these campsites frequently have to rent. Stay tuned for our mid-December road trip!

Unexpected hospitality in the rain

It's been months since I've been able to ride my bike to my favourite park south of here. After arriving back in Japan in early August we've had plenty of heat and rain and I've had plenty of work to fill my days. In the middle of it all, I was longing for a quieter day that coincided with good weather. Up until we got up yesterday morning, it looked like it was going to be that perfect combo! But somehow the weather didn't conform to those earlier forecasts! 

My only photo from the day, just after 
arrived home.

With stubborn optimism I rode off mid-morning into very light rain. From there it went downhill! Partway into the ride I pulled out my rain jacket. By the time got to the park about 30 minutes later, my glasses were wet, but my jeans weren't too damp.

Koganei Park is one of the largest parks in Tokyo. It's about 80 hectares (112 professional soccer fields or 80 400m running tracks; or to use a park in my hometown: more than three times the size of Queens Park in Toowoomba). It's a beautiful place, but there are only a couple of places that you can shelter if it's raining.

So, I headed for my favourite sheltered spot and discovered that a few others were sheltering there too. I wasn't surprised, but a little disappointed. I cruised past on my bike, but recognised a couple sitting in the shelter: two people from church. Initially I was going to find somewhere else to hang out and eat my packed lunch and read the book I'd brought, but something prompted me to change my mind and I circled back to say hi. They were surprised to see me, but welcomed me and we ended up spending nearly three hours together. We were all hoping that the rain would ease up while we talked, but it really didn't, it got worse, and chillier. So, in the end we departed, me, for my seven kilometre ride home and them, for a much shorter walk to their nearby house.

This time I donned my full rain gear, and covered my two bags with plastic. Nothing I could do about keeping my glasses clear, though, so I peered between raindrops on my specs and thankfully had a safe trip home. My rain gear did a pretty good job, though the cuffs on my jeans and flannie (US Eng: flannel shirt) both got fairly wet. It was a relief to get inside and dry off my face!

Hospitality

The sermon at our church on Sunday was on 1 Peter 4:7–11. Here's 8–10:

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. (NIV)

It's a rich passage with many concepts, but a couple are hospitality and loving one another. At lunch after church one man asked "How does hospitality look if you're an introvert?"

It so happened that that was the same man I encountered in the park with his wife. Hospitality is much a broader concept than hosting someone at your home for a meal or a night. In fact we have a whole industry using this name, an industry that encompasses providing food and beverages, accommodation, tourism, travel, and entertainment. 

I would venture to say that Christian hospitality is welcoming others, it's having a heart that is genuinely open to others. A heart that creates space (physical and otherwise) for others. I would also say that sitting and chatting to another person is a type of hospitality. 

When I arrived this man and his wife did practical things like shuffled over to give me a dry place to sit and offered a cloth to wipe my glasses. They also shared some of the food that they'd brought (something I forgot to do, but it's very Japanese to do this when eating together like this). They didn't dash off, they welcomed me into their conversation and we spent a few hours getting to know one another better. This was blessed fellowship and one that we would have missed if not for the rain (we probably wouldn't have met at the shelter except that we sought respite from the rain and would have left earlier if it hadn't been raining).

I'm thankful. I was able to share this story last night at our church's prayer meeting and another lady said she was encouraged by it. It reminded her that God has the power to make "coincidences" like this happen and encouraged her to pray for someone she occasionally encounters.

What other things would fit under the umbrella of Christian hospitality that we don't typically first think of?

Time to rest (and move)

One of the biggest challenges of a short, fast-paced home assignment is getting rest. We've designated each Monday as a day off and have that written on our online shared calendar. It's important to decide that beforehand otherwise a dangerous "creep" can happen and you end up with not enough time to truly rest. Also, we're trying to have a mentality that downtime can happen at other times too. This week we have meetings on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. It'll be wise to have rest time during the day on those days (and probably Friday morning too...after an evening event I often don't sleep well).

Yesterday (Monday), on our designated day off, we went a little further afield for a longer walk. White Rock Conservation Park is not far from our home church in Redbank Plains, Ipswich. We've lived around this area several times in the last 15 years and yet never gone to the park, though I've heard it mentioned many times by people. Yesterday we had good weather, plus the time and energy to go and explore it. We ended up walking seven kilometres through typical Queensland bushland. It was a delightful outing that was good for us on many fronts.

There were so many gorgeous trees, mostly a typical Queensland eucalyptus forest.

The "rock" itself is a sandstone outcrop. We walked from the carpark in to the rock and out again.

We saw a number of kangaroos, but none so close as these two who calmly grazed on grass as we walked within a few metres of them.

When we were almost back to our car we passed this kookaburra. He was perched at head height, only a metre or so off the track and also didn't move as we walked past, pausing to take his photo.

Not tying my significance to my busyness

Yesterday I got to ride to my favourite large park. I don't think I've been there since April! It was my first ride there after the worst of the summer heat had abated. Just like last year, for weeks I've found myself longing for this.

It wasn't just a 16 km ride, I stopped in the park for a picnic and read (mostly non-fiction) for over three hours. Like a mini retreat, really. Also, riding a bike gives you time to think! And I think better when I'm doing something physical.

I was surprised when two main books I spent time reading yesterday intersected in some of their themes, as they are authors from very different worlds. The first one I mentioned a couple of weeks ago: Life Interrupted by a friend, Susan Chapman, it was published three years ago during the pandemic. It's short and jam packed with things to think about how we live our lives, our expectations, how to continue to grow, and take care of ourselves at the same time. Susan is a missionary with our organisation and I've known her since before we came to Japan. She, like me, has lived her life in Australia and East Asia and grew up in a similar part of Australia to me. Her book was born out of a major interruption that she and her husband experienced during Covid. It's a text that you could use for a retreat or a small group, because there's plenty of questions and avenues to explore.

The Cosmo field: I alway stop here
and take photos at this time of the year.
They were almost the only flowers in the
whole park yesterday.

One quote that stood out to me was, "To say no appropriately, we need to stand against any cultural expectation that our busyness is linked to our significance. Author Brené Brown sums it up well—'if we want to live a wholehearted life, we have to become intentional about cultivating sleep and play, and about letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth.'"

The second book is The Road to Daybreak, and is the first book I've read by Henri J.M. Nouwen. I've seen him mentioned by authors like Tim Keller and Philip Yancey, but haven't picked up one of Nouwen's works myself. Henri was a Dutch Catholic priest who worked for much of his life in north America; he was an intellectual as well as a priest, a speaker and mentor as well as dipping his toe in the waters of missionary work in South America. This book was extracted from a diary he wrote during a year when God led him away from the intellectual world of Harvard into a very different life. He was serving as the priest at a L'Arche home in France. (L'Arche ("The Ark") is an international federation of non-profit organisations working to create networks of community where people with and without intellectual disabilities live and work together–Wikipedia.) 

I've only just begun this latter book, but am finding it fascinating. He was in his early 50s and was searching for God's leading.  He writes: "I feel a tension within me. I have only a limited number of years left for active ministry. Why not use them well?...Time given to inner renewal is never wasted. God is not in a hurry."

So here the two books coincide. I struggle with needing to link my output to my significance. Nouwen was discovering that these people he was living with (and indeed himself also) were significant despite having limited output and limited potential for the future as far as the world understood it. I know this all in my head, but I so often fall short when I try to link that to my thoughts about my own worth and value. I want, so often, to prove my value to others through what I do and how busy I am, I get depressed when work is a little slow and my thoughts turn to all my deficits and then start condemning me as "pretty useless really".

I saw a lot of red dragonflies. This one is
called the "Spotted darter".

So with these authors speaking to me, I felt very much at peace reading in the park yesterday. It was a rare "perfect" day in Tokyo: neither hot nor cold, not windy or wet or grey. This side of heaven I will never get my thoughts and feelings perfectly aligned with how God sees me, but maybe, incrementally, I can grow more Christ-like and less tied to my faulty thinking.

The sky was gorgeous!

Farewells to precious things and places

If I were a poet, I’d be able to write some odes this week as I say some goodbyes to things. But as I’m not, a blog post will have to do. 

Oven

The first one would be my Japanese gas oven. Most Australian homes come with ovens and stove tops, that’s not the case here. In fact installed ovens are rare. More common are small convection microwave ovens that you plug in and can use both as a microwave and a conventional oven. When we moved into this house in 2010 there was a giant, old American gas oven in the kitchen. Obviously it had been imported by a former American tenant (there had been several prior to us taking over tenancy). It was old, however, and you practically had to lie on the floor to light the oven.

Five years after we moved into the house the oven started leaking gas and we had to dispose of it. I’ve written before about that drama and the decision to buy a (not cheap) Japanese gas oven. It’s not common for missionaries here to buy an oven to install in their homes, but I’m glad we did. I use this oven a lot. It’s brought me much joy and many people have been blessed by what we’ve been able to cook in it.

Because we own it we are responsible to get it uninstalled (not something we can do on our own), but also have the potential to take it to our new place next year. However, it remains to be seen if the owners of our next place will allow us to have this installed there. 

So we’ll put this in storage on Monday and wait to see if we’ll ever be able to use it again. I really hope so as I love cooking and this is the best oven I’ve ever used (yep, it beats anything I’ve used in Australia).

Plants

The second things I’d write about saying goodbye to are my plants, which have almost all gone now. This time, instead of asking just one person to look after more than a dozen plants, I asked local FB friends if they’d like to nominate one or more that they’d like to take care of. As a result about six people have taken plants for the year. I’m sad that my house is looking empty and I don’t have plants to look at and enjoy, but also glad that I haven’t had to throw them all out. 

I’m not really a gardener, but I have grown to love a few pot plants (yes, that's really what Australians call plants in pots) in my house. The bay window halfway up our stairs and just outside the bathroom has been a great place to put them, and probably the thing that most started me down this path. Keeping plants there made them easy to take care of and provided a great shelf of green (and sometimes other colours, when they flowered) to look at. The plants overflowed from this shelf and we've had plants in other places, including the narrow platform outside our tatami lounge room (maybe called an engawa) and a shelf outside our dining room. These locations also made plants easy to take care of and were visible from our living areas. 

I probably won’t have any plants in Australia, one year is just too short, unless I get a couple with the intention of gifting them to others at the end of our stay. We’re happy that the garden in this new house is almost non-existent (we’ve had the opposite and struggled with the responsibilities). But the great thing about this new house in Ipswich is that it’s close to lots of parkland with many, many plants that I don’t have to take care of, just enjoy!

Bike and park (rides)

Third thing to say goodbye to is my bike, and that is closely linked with the park I’ve ridden to numerous times in the last eight years.

This bike has done many kilometres. It’s my workhorse, I've used it it on my twice weekly shopping trips where both baskets are usually fully loaded. It’s rarely let me down and has needed minimal maintenance. I’m giving this bike away next week, and will likely get a new/er one next year.

The bike has also given me the opportunity to ride to the big park south of us (about 5 km). This park-ride, as you might know if you’ve been following this blog for a while, is a destination that I love to go to. It’s not just that it’s a great destination, it’s the anticipation, the “hope” that that can give me after a busy stretch at work that has been incredibly valuable.

Here is my first post about riding to the park in October 2015, it mentions a resolution to ride there every week or two, but that simply hasn't been possible. I haven't kept a track of how many times I've ridden there, but it would be unusual to ride more than twice a month and sometimes several months went past without going.

I rode here on Wednesday this week to say my goodbyes and sat for a while thinking of many of the visits I’ve made. I was able to get there during the pandemic and did a personal retreat there one day in 2020, when I’d been cooped up in my house for months with the rest of the family as they did school, and then a long summer holiday at home. I’ve visited on my birthday, enjoyed the cherry blossoms and the many other flowers that bloom through the year. It's been fun to visit in all seasons and see how it changes. I've met friends there, and eaten many a picnic in this park. 

Our first encounter with this park was when the boys were young as it’s got a lovely big playground and bike rental place (we used to drive when we were taking the family). I’ve got memories of those times too. One particular car trip stands out, when I had a car load of kids (ours plus one extra) telling really bad jokes…for the whole trip (about half an hour, but felt like an eternity).

These days the park has become “mine”. A place to retreat to, to enjoy peace and quiet, and the exercise getting to and from has been good too, when I could get there.

But alas it’s goodbye for now to this place too. As I’ve already written, there are many green areas close to our new home, so I’m looking forward to them too, but I’ll miss Koganei Koen (park).

House

And soon it will be goodbye to this house too. We stop living here on Sunday evening and will hand the keys over next Friday (14th). It's the end of an era, one that started when our youngest began kindergarten and ended when he graduated from high school! That might not seem to remarkable to you, but to most missionaries that is an unusual stretch of time living in the same house. 

So we're thankful and know that it's time to move on. Next July, we hope to be moving to somewhere smaller that's easier to keep cool in summer and keep warm in winter, and also easier to keep clean! Hopefully it will also be a place I can keep pot plants, can ride to this park, and can continue cooking with my oven!

Mt Coot-Tha botanical gardens meander

This week we've had beautiful weather here in Brisbane. And it's turned into a "week of parks". On Monday three of us spent a couple of hours at Mt Coot-Tha botanical gardens, a place we've driven past many, many times, but not gone in. It was spectacular. I've shared some photos at the end of this post.

On Friday we met my parents at Queens Park in Ipswich for a BBQ lunch, also a really lovely park, but one that's much older (159 years, according to a plaque I saw). The park also houses a free Australian native animal zoo that we enjoyed. It's the first time we've gone to a zoo in many years. It was a fun experience with these Aussie boys who've not spent much of their lives in Australia.

Today David and I spent several hours at a much newer park: Rocks Riverside Park. We were joined by two couples who have known us for many years. Great conversations.

The temperatures here have been around 20C in the middle of the day. Very comfortable. Alas David and our youngest son are about to return to Tokyo, where the temperatures are hot and humid day and night. I'm sad to see them go, but happy that I don't have to brace for that.

The next month is going to be weird. David and I have rarely been apart for so long, and in this case we'll both be single parents. I'm staying here and "telecommuting" to Japan from my desk. My middle son and I are also moving to our sixth bed for this trip on Monday. For the next four weeks we'll be staying with a family from our eldest son's church, incidentally, the same family he lived with for a few years. Later in the month we'll move one more time: this time to two separate places. Our son will stay with his brother for a couple of weeks and I'll stay with a friend and her family.

It's a very different look to our usual routine, so will take some adjusting to. On top of starting work again, I will have a few more appointments to attend with our middle son. These extra two weeks will also give me more time to hang out with my two older sons. Plus I plan to catch up with a few more friends that I haven't been able to see thus far. 

We'll see how it all works. The main idea is to give our anxious middle son a bit more time to experience Australian life, experience that we hope will help fuel his thoughts about the future. 

I am a little anxious about my return in September, because in addition to the uncertainty about international travel at this time, our visas expire only two days after we're planning to fly back. Worst-case scenarios are playing on my mind, especially if I awaken at 3 or 4am!

Trust in the Lord, that's what my close friends are reminding me to do. God who goes before us! 

    It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed (Deut. 31:8 ESV)

Early this morning I was also silently repeating as much as I could remember of Psalm 23 to myself:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside still waters.

He restores my soul.

He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

    I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;

you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

But look at these photos from the Mt Coot-Tha botanical gardens. I've used a free app, PictureThis, on my phone to identify them accurately.

Japanese camellia

New Zealand cabbage tree

Hairpin banksia (native Australian)

Aloe vera

Coral tree (native to Brazil)

My companions in this two-hour stroll

Butterfly agave

Close up of the hairpin banksia flower

Crimson bottlebrush (native to Australia)

Cockatoos

Parrot's beak

Just my little phone camera: so I couldn't Zoom
in to the two kookaburras who were entertaining
us from the top of this sign. We've driven past
this sign so many times! It was odd to be on the other side of the wall.

Endemic to this part of Australia: bush turkey.

Grevillea (Red silky oak, a species of spider flowers, an Australian native)

Huge fern: silver tree (from New Zealand)