Wade Family in Japan - Summer 2017

The weather is nice in Nakano, but we're tired and anticipating the long trip home. I went for a nice early bike ride up into the hills above town. There are lots of small paved trails (barely big enough for a tiny Japanese truck to pass) that lead into gorgeous canyons and tree tunnels. I'm not in riding shape so I didn't go far with the old mountain bike I had, but there would be endless possibilities for fun training on a road bike. Isa and Angela and I also went out for a bit on the bikes, but we mostly packed and prepped for tomorrow. We'll definitely need to return someday. 明日は長いでしょう。

A slow day in Nakano. Some rain sprinkles, some short bike rides, and some walks mixed with lots of Netflix. This afternoon we ventured out to Nagano city which is a nice little city in the mountains. I had heard that it feels a bit like SLC, and I agree. It's a little smaller than the SL Valley, but has a similar feel with impressive mountains (these are much greener) all around. I would love to explore it someday. We walked by the Olympic Memorial Park and took some silly pics, and then headed back to the farmhouse. やっぱり、ウェード家族は山が大好きだ。

We got up early and took a bus, a commuter train, a Shinkansen, a "Thunderbird Express" train, another Shinkansen, a small-town train, and a van to get to our last stop on this epic Japan journey -- a farmhouse in Nagano prefecture. The house is situated along the Chikuma River, near Kaesa Train station in a place called Nakano, about 20 miles from Nagano city. This is the view from the back yard. The house itself is an old-style construction common to this area with distinctive steep roof made of metal so the snow slides off easily. It's not snowy in July, but it is so much cooler than Kumamoto that we enjoy being outside again. Here's the view from the front porch. And one from a short hike. We plan to explore a bit and relax a lot before our summer of alternate reality ends and we have to face the music back in Utah. 帰りたくないなー

We spent the morning at the church building where I lived for a year in 1991-92 in the north part of Kumamoto. I remembered a few people, but not many, but it was fun to reconnect with the place and the feeling of it. We lucked out, and the Kishi family - famous for their 10 children (they've been on Japanese tv because no one believes it's possible to raise 10 kids in Japan) - invited us to their yearly nagashi somen party at their house in Uto. Nagashi means something like "cascading" in Japanese, and it is a summer activity where somen noodles are sent down a chute of bamboo and people grab them with chopsticks as they cascade past and dip them in sauce. Super yummy and super fun. The Kishi extended family and some neighbors and missionaries (some American and some Japanese) were all there and we had a great time. Near the end they sent some other treats (chocolates and candies) down the chute as well to the delight of the children (ok, and me.) I...

This morning we traveled across town to Suizenji Park, a Japanese-style garden built near a shrine by an important samurai family during the Edo Period. The park is really beautiful, complete with koi-filled pond and bridges and a shrine and a tea house and carefully trimmed trees and even a grassy mound that is supposed to resemble Mt. Fuji, all nestled within the city. Near the entrance they were having a water treasure hunt where dozens of preschool kids searched the pond for balls with numbers on them that could be exchanged for prizes. It was funny to see all the kid splashing around in the formal garden pond. After watching the treasure hunt, the girls posed at the shrine's torii gates, and Lila and Isa especially loved feeding the koi, turtles, and aggressive pigeons. After Suizenji, the girls wanted a simple lunch so we got them Chinese take-out and Ang and I want to a shabu-shabu place for lunch and ate too much while taking embarrassing pictures of...

We took a train to Kumamoto at midday - the Shinkansen makes it so much faster to travel around Kyushu than it was when I was here before. Ang got a pick with her new boyfriends... a boy band that has done a lot PR for trains around this part of Japan that i recovering from a major earthquake last year. We got lunch before boarding a trolley for the trip through downtown to our apartment. The apartment is a really interesting place. I think it used to be an office in a building that has apartments on the upper floors and businesses on the bottom. They have done a really nice job making a cool living space that is plenty big enough for all of us. It's clearly our favorite Airbnb so far on this trip. The kids especially love the "yoga hammock." Walking around the shotengai - shopping streets - has brought back a million memories both of my missionary and student time in Kumamoto, and we took a bus to Kumamoto University, where the memories really hit me like a ton...