Nature around here is amazing – even though we live right on the edge between the big city and the wilderness, during summer it feels more like our house is in the middle of nature. When we some time ago, after days spent inside recovering from a summer cold, finally went outside again, my son […]
Giving gifts to say thank you is a seasonal thing in Japan, new year season and summer being the two periods where most of the gift-giving occur. Companies can send customers gifts, patients can send a gift to for example a doctor or dentist who has been particularly helpful to them, friends and relatives can
After rain. Comes more rain – that is how I have experienced summer so far this year. Sure, there have been a few days or hours of sun in between the persistent showers, but the last month has really given us a lot of precipitation. And nature has loved it – the grass is growing visibly day
Summer in Japan is quite different from summer in Sweden, but there are a few weeks in May June before the humidity arrives that have the emotional quality of Swedish summer when it is the most beautiful. Lately we have enjoyed warm days, a hint of dryness in the air, the evenings and mornings still
みどりの日, or Greenery Day as it is called in English, is a holiday during the Japanese holiday week called Golden Week. GW has four public holidays during a period of a week, and Greenery Day is celebrated on May 4th, although I like to think of the day as the literal translation instead – Green
During the school spring break we had dear visitors from Tokyo who used their little holiday to come and spend some days in Fukuoka with us. It was such a happy occasion and our son was thrilled to spend time playing with his older friends. The difficult thing with being the youngest though, is not
It is one year now since our son started kindergarten. In Japan the school year starts in April and there is a little holiday for the students between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next. It is difficult to believe that it has already been one year, and when I
For some people, spring is cherry blossom, sakura, late March pick-nicks in the park under the cherry trees (and accompanying hay fever). For others spring is warmish February days when the plum trees are in bloom, when you can leave your winter jacket at home and enjoy some vitamin-producing sunlight. Tough I love the cherry
I have come to love Japan, the nature, culture, food, the people – I feel at home here. But sometimes there is a little part of me missing Sweden, thinking of my old home with a twinge of longing. I have my parents there, my sister and her family, my dear friends, there is the delicious
In our little garden we have a Japanese maple tree, or momiji as it is called in Japanese. It is my favorite tree, I adore the small star shaped leaves that shift from green to orange to the most intense shade of red in autumn. Coming home after having picked up my son from the
When our son was born he got a kimono from my wife’s aunt. It is a kimono that is often used when a family goes to a shrine in November to celebrate their son’s health and well being (a Japanese rite of passage called shichi-go-san named after the age seven-five-three when children are celebrated like this, boys
I have probably said it many times already on this blog, but I cannot keep myself from saying it again – I just love autumn in Japan. The colors, the skies, the way the wind feels on the skin, the sun shining at an angle, shining trough the leaves making them sparkle in all shades