Wednesday 17th July
Takayama, Sendai
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| The first jigsaw puzzle we completed. This oversized burger was just too big. |
And in fact we did survive (see my previous post here). After removing the more obvious spiders (and their webs and poop), wiping down important surfaces, covering the dirty mattresses with sheets or blankets and using our sleeping bags and pillows it worked okay. We found evidence of small rodents in the cutlery drawer so we cleaned that whole drawer out, washing everything and replacing the drawer liner.
Being Australian, I’m a bit of a beach snob. I haven’t seen many beaches in Japan, but most of them are not that appealing to someone who doesn’t even much like Australia’s beautiful white-sand beaches. But we did our duty and took the boys down for a paddle/sand castle building.
Actually three out of five of us would choose mountains over beach anytime. Beaches are lacking in shade and are so, well, sandy.
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| It was pretty wet and miserable. |
Again I didn’t feel tempted to get wet, in fact the temperatures didn’t rise much above 20 degrees Celsius, so the spectators on the beach were wrapped up. I don’t know how the younger ones managed to cope in the water for as long as they did.
Thursday 18th July
Takayama, Sendai
Wednesday was grey, and we went to bed with the sound of rain on the tin roof (bliss!). We all slept in again on Wednesday and were greeted with heavy rain that didn’t tempt any of us to venture out until it slowed down towards lunchtime. After lunch we had an errand to run at a hardware store. But other than that we stayed at home, doing jigsaw puzzles, playing word and card games, and reading. A lovely day indeed!
That night we celebrated the end of our holidays with an inside BBQ. Lots of meat and not fancy, just how the boys love it.
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| Last night BBQ using a Japanese hotplate. |
Friday 19th July
Sendai to Tokyo
We packed up and cleaned the house again. And then took off for our last drive of the journey: back to Tokyo.
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| The second puzzle we completed in three days. |
Tokyo surprised us with not being as hot as we'd imagined. Though I was sad our adventure was over, it was good to be home and back in our solid beds, enjoying our own shower and toilet. It was nice to put everything away and know it would be there when you got back. One of the difficulties of camping is that everything gets moved around all the time, so it is easy to lose things, especially at night! I developed the habit of using a bag for my "bedside table".
We'd definitely love to do another camping tour like this one again sometime in the future, but with our home assignment coming up next year, it may be a couple of years before we can. Perhaps we could explore down near Osaka, Kyoto, Nara area, or over on the western side of the island near Nagoya.
Anyways, we now have our memories of Hokkaido, and dreams about the future to sustain us through the coming months of heads-down-tails-up of work and school.
3 comments:
I'm sure the next people to visit the cabin will appreciate your work. I always had difficulty with having to do my own cleaning before and after my holiday either in Tak or Karuizawa, especially since it was so much like my regular job at the GH.
I agree Georgia. I don't like cleaning at the best of times and to do more cleaning on my holiday than I usually do at home doesn't sit that well with me. One reason why we usually don't do short stays at OMF places: there's too much cleaning.
I loved traveling along with you on your adventure vicariously! I, too, have a little night table "bag" I use when traveling. It's a small zippered pouch that holds my alarm clock, melatonin, flashlight, eye mask, pen, etc.
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