It feels like yesterday when my son and I were walking past the rice fields on our way home from kindergarten while looking at the little tadpoles swimming around the all but non-existent rice plants. It was late spring and there was a long hot summer lying before us, nature outings, trips to the beach, …
Summer in Japan is festival time, and especially so this year. Because of the corona pandemic many festivals have been canceled for a few years, and this summer they finally start to happen more full scale again. There are all kinds of festivals such as dance festivals, festivals celebrating local deities, and of course the …
It is getting hot now. Often too hot to be outside without feeling like I have stepped into a sauna. Not a dry one, but one with high humidity that makes me want to change my clothes as soon as I step into it. The Japanese summer has arrived and I am both looking forward …
What better way to end a beautiful spring Saturday than to, together with my wife and son, enjoy the sun setting over the sea? Well, the only thing I can think of when writing this is watching that sunset while taking photos in a magical place and hearing my son joyfully playing in the sand. …
Sometimes I find that words can be a distraction when writing. With the view of Mount Fuji still in my mind, and the weight of my son still on my lap, tonight was such a time.
Being lovers of nature as well as the old and new world, we are so fortunate in where we live. While a shorter walk takes us to the train station or the shopping center, a short bicycle ride takes us to the nearby beach and mountains. And a thirty minutes drive will let us reach …
The warm summer days in Fukuoka do not suit the active life of a two-year-old who wants to be out playing all day. It is a long wait for him between the morning outing (sometimes we go to the community center in the mornings, sometimes to the local shopping mall, if the sun is behind …
Already a year has past since I in front of an open window enjoyed the rice frogs sining in the rice fields for the first time. And this year I have so come to love these fields – they feel like home. From the window I have been following them going from brown patches of dirt …
Tonight my son fell asleep lying on my chest; I cannot imagine anything more beautiful. His whole existence is beautiful – the pure innocence of a child. The trust he puts in us without even thinking about it – I was lying in bed thinking of what I possibly could have done to deserve it, to …
Every now and then my wife goes to Tokyo for work. This time she was away for three days leaving my son and I to handle two nights without her milk. So what to do between morning and nightfall to enjoy the day and also to make us as tired as possible to make the …
I cannot get enough of the mountains here in Japan. Every day I feel drawn to them, to see them, to feel them, to walk among them. It is almost like they talk to me through the air I breath, the cold winds that sweep around my face, the dense forests. The air at home when …
Being a beautiful day, my son and I decided we should go exploring together. Just as I was about to prepare our picnic lunch, our son’s grandmother called and said she had prepared some lunch for us today; wow! So it was with homemade onigiri bento that we set off on our bicycle heading for …