Wednesday - Dale's Book 1

When my son was 6 months old, my husband and I decided to move back to Japan and teach English again. This was all doing of the manager at our old company that hired all the teachers in the Honjo-Chichibu area. He had kept sending emails for us to return. So when we finally agreed to go back I was very happy and anxious. This time we were coming back with a baby. How on Earth we where thinking to raise this boy without our family? Boy was I wrong! Family is where the heart is. Even if it isn't blood lines, you can find people that will adopt you and take care of you. And so did we.

It was a cold March night. We arrived in Chichibu in an old, empty and uninviting apartment. We had absolutely nothing but a futon and two pillows, a cover, and two suitcases standing in the small kitchen. It was depressing and scary. But the next day, our friend and a manager at the company came to see how we were and brought a big sketchbook. The cover was signed in big messy hand writing: Dale's Book." What a guy! He remembered that I was an artist and he brought supplies to a starving artist! This is one of the drawings from "Dale's Book." I owe you, Dale!

"Panda Ride in Fujioka"

Soon after we arrived, we had a very small amount of money for entertainment. Often we made trips to the old places that we knew and remembered from our first stay in Kamikawa. A lot of them had playgrounds like this one. Slides, turning wheels, panda and dinosaur rides, swings, etc. Between Onishi and Fujioka there is a nice cherry viewing place with a great playground on top of a hill and a soccer and baseball field at the bottom of it. It was always populated by people playing sports, having picnics or visiting their kids' school tournaments. My son loved it there because he would always make friends and go on slides with his new buddies. Good old times!