All week I have been searching for a few moments to write a few lines, and I have not until now found that chance. In reality I would have liked to have a lot of time to write story after story – it has been that kind of a week – but for now a little will have to do. It started with packing moving boxes up to the moment the moving company rang on the door; there is a long story just in that experience, trying to fit a home into boxes while at the same time caring for a baby that does not want to do anything other than “help” removing everything from the boxes.
After the moving truck left, we said good bye to Tokyo, and embarked on a “forced” holiday while our household goods were in transit and we had nowhere to sleep. The experience of traveling in times of the pandemic is also in itself worth a story, and especially so considering where we went; I look forward to writing that one as well as the challenges to try to make a hotel bed safe for a child that likes to wake up and quietly move around in the middle of the night. Finally we arrived at our new home in Fukuoka, my wife’s hometown.
I have come to love Fukuoka, we have come here many times to visit my wife’s parents and when our son was born we felt that this is the place we want him to grow up. Our new home is a house in what feels like the countryside and yet is only a fifteen minutes walk from schools, the train station and the supermarket and a thirty minutes train ride from the airport. Why we decided on this particular place was that while it is so conveniently situated, it is also so close to nature, and being close to nature is as important for me as it is for my wife.
Today, in between the showers that the rainy season brings with it (it must have arrived on the same flight as us), we took our first countryside walk; me and my wife carrying umbrellas, our son happily waving his legs in the baby car. We walked up a small lane passing through bamboo groves, crop fields and water reservoirs. We came across a plot of land where we concluded that long ago there must have been a house there, and the owner surly had an affinity for bonsai trees; the small piece of land was now covered in still beautifully shaped but overgrown bonsai.
While walking along a field, looking at the crops, I had a strong reminiscence of the place where I used to live in Sweden and my favorite walk path there. I got overwhelmed with the feeling that I have really come home. Then suddenly my wife jumped and screamed – no, it was not a snake. Just a crack in the road. I guess we both are a bit worn out after a week that feels like a marathon finally coming to an end. But finally arrived at our new life, I am now looking forward to writing small stories of a househusbands life in Kyushu.
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