My day in paradise!

Every day I spend here at Nasu is enjoyable.  I love the mountain air, the country feel to everything, and to top it off, the family atmosphere here.

I woke up this morning around 7.00.  Everybody else was already awake.  So not long after coming down, breakfast was served.  This was our typical Japanese breakfast, all eating together, and naturally, with a large bowl of rice :).

After a nice and slow, relaxing start to the day I put my socks on and told Ottosan to put me to work.  So first job was he had a lot of thin, flat timber that had been under the house for years, that needed splitting for kindling.  So I spent some time with a hand axe working my way through that.  Kenichi went out to the outlet store to look at golf gear, and Okkasan, Kozue and the kids went out shopping.  So it was just Ottosan, Mio, Kaoru and I at the house.  We took it easy, and had a nice break for some green tea.  Ottosan started trying to split some larger wood with a couple of splitters – the wood was too big to fit in his hydrolic splitter.  So I took over that job from him as he wouldn’t leave it for me to do later, and then it was back to splitting the flat wood.

Once that was finished we moved it all out the back and had an ice cream.  The day was overcast, keeping it nice and cool.  This would have been a lot harder if it was as hot and sunny as yesterday was!  Then I got the chain saw out, took it apart and gave it a good clean, and then sharpened the blades, enjoying a nice cold beer in the process.  During this, everybody came home, and we stopped to have lunch, which included rice, sushi, and god knows what else but I ate and enjoyed it all!

After lunch I went back to finish the chain saw, and then also did the little chain saw, which didn’t take long to sharpen.  Then Kaoru and I went for a walk to enjoy the peace and quiet for a bit.  When we got back, Ottosan had his digger out.  Firstly, he shouldn’t be doing anything strenuous while I was around.  Secondly, this looked like fun and something I should take part in!  So I finished my beer and hopped on board, with a somewhat safety brief (in Japanese).  This was a lot harder than it looked.  Two levers, each with 4 directions, controlling different hydrolics.  I was able to get the hang of it a bit, but was still no professional.  It was fun trying, and also good being helpful.  At the end, I drove it back in to the shed without breaking anything, so that was a good finish, I thought :).

I grabbed a couple of beers and Kenichi and I had a chat.  I haven’t spoken to him a lot, and it was good to hear about his company being bought by Yahoo.  We talked about various things, including his business, Inflatable World, Datascore, etc.  It’s great having somebody who I can converse with, despite language differences, who is very similar to me with the IT background.  He is a very business savvy person, and has some ideas of what we can do with Inflatable World in Japan, so fingers crossed we can pull something off.

The kids had been practicing a dance routine, so they came out and gave us a performance.  Very enjoyable.  Yukari has been taking dance lessons and was clearly the choreographer.  After our show, it was dinner time, so we came down to the main house.  Ottosan was having a nap, so Kenichi and I had another beer, and then had dinner – our last one all together.  It was another enjoyable meal.

We finished off the bottle of muscat, and had some Jack Daniels, to finish the night off.  Then it was bath time, and people started drifting off to bed.  It’s currently 8.52, and most people have gone to sleep.  I guess given everybody wakes up so early, it’s no surprise they go to bed early!  It’s very different for me as I’m such a night owl.  But I’ll get to enjoy a nice relaxing bath to soothe the muscles after a hard days work.

It’s sad to think we are leaving Nasu tomorrow, and I don’t know when I will be seeing the family like this again – in fact, I think this is the first time we have all been together, other than our wedding (although Yoichi is missing, unfortunately).  I hope we can do it all again some time.  I can barely communicate with my family, but all I feel from them is love and support, and we always manage to laugh together and enjoy each others company – whether it be just with Mio and Arisa, or Mio, Yoichi, Kozue, Kenichi and the kids, or Kaoru’s parents.  It motivates me to want to learn more Japanese so I can communicate at least a bit with them all while we can still enjoy this time together.