Picking up where the last post left off, on the second day of our little Oita week-end trip. After the first day’s hot springs and harmony, we embarked on a day with hot springs and hell. In Beppu, a town famous for its many onsen, there is a collection of seven hot springs called Beppu […]
April in Japan is just wonderful. Beautiful trees. No air conditioning necessary. Longer days and lukewarm winds. There is no better time for a small weekend outing, especially so when dear family members come to visit. So before the new school year started, we headed towards Oita prefecture in Kyushu. Oita is famous for many
March is the end of the school year in Japan, and before next year starts in the beginning of April, the children have a few weeks of holiday. Our son had found a pamphlet at kindergarten regarding events for kids where Tomica toy cars and other types of vehicles were the center of attention, and
A week or two ago, my wife and I sat at the dining table talking when we suddenly heard a bang from the window. We went over, expecting to see a bird lying on the ground outside, but the veranda was empty and when I went outside I could not find any trace of a
A short anecdote from our little family. One busy morning this week as we were getting dressed preparing to go and wait for the kindergarten bus, my son took an interest in the top of my head. I was bending down, arranging his socks, when he suddenly said pappa, du har en ladugårdsplan på huvudet.
My son and I have been playing with letters for more than a year now and he has gotten quite good at recognizing and pronouncing them. He has come to the point where he is enjoying trying to read shorter words and while in Sweden I bought a couple of learn-to-read-books that we have started
Every night after dinner in Sweden we played some board games. It was my son who started this “tradition” and he invited me and his grandparents to many different games that he found among the toys my parents has saved from when my siblings and I were young. Labyrinth became a favorite, so much so
My son farmor, grandmother, worked many many years as a Swedish language teacher for children with Swedish as a second language. What better way for a little Japanese speaking child to improve his Swedish than playing and reading and going shopping and cooking with my mom! During our time in Sweden, my son has been
I have come to love living in Japan. I have come to love the Japanese cuisine, the Japanese culture and traditions, the Japanese nature, the Japanese people. But even so, there are aspects of Sweden that I miss so every time we come to visit my parents in Sweden, I take the chance to enjoy
Coming back to Sweden, it always takes time to get used to be in what used to me my home country. After a week or two I feel quite at home but when arriving I always feel a bit like a tourist coming to visit another country. The people look different, the customs are different,
Recently we came across the first snow of the year, and I am happy to say that I was as excited as my son. As he learned one year ago when we visited Sweden for Christmas, playing in snow is a world of it’s own. There is something magical about being in a white landscape,
A day not long ago I got quite nostalgic. It was the first time I have experienced nostalgia just by riding on a highway, but there I was, sitting next to my son in the back seat, looking out of the window at the mountains flying by, and nostalgia hit me. It was not seeing