Larking About Or Creating Art?

A few years back I bought some light sticks for camp and now we can't go without a supply of them! Ebi-kun actually picked the packs up this time and since we were in the cabin, it was REALLY dark. I decided to set up the camera and have some fun with it....

We tried various exposures and different moves to see which would get the best effects, we even had Taylor Swift on to help with the groovy moves!

Top Of The Mountain

The campsite we stayed at over Golden Week, really was in the middle of nowhere, so we drove to the top of another mountain which looked like it had a bit more going on. There was a small art gallery, kids athletic park and an onsen (hot spring). 

We started with the gallery, some nice stuff, very small and didn't take much time to get round. Then Ebi-kun needed to get his wriggles out....

It was a beautiful day, weather was just perfect, no filter on these pics, the sky really was that blue!

We had to do 2 laps of the park...

I enjoyed playing with the new camera, these ferns caught my eye, they looked like fairies or pixies hiding in the woods..

We stopped for lunch then had a round of putter golf, of course daddy won, strange coincidence every time he is in charge of scoring hmmm. Good fun though and it was quite a tough course, took us a while to get round.

Ebi-kun and daddy then went to the onsen, I'm not sure a big onsen fan. I still can't get my head around how the shy Japanese are totally OK with getting butt naked and in the bath with a bunch of strangers! Really is not relaxing for me, especially when you get a bunch of old baa-chans checking out my non Japanese "bits". *shudder* 

The place looked really busy so I decided coffee, cake and a read of my book would be far more relaxing!

Then it was a trip to the supermarket and BBQ for dinner. Fabulous day!

Then it was back home for cake…

The last night at camp it rained, a lot! It was a good job I didn't need to get up in the night to pee, some clever improvisation would have been going on. Of course after the rainy night we woke to a beautiful day, now why couldn't we have had this weather the day before? 

And yes, that is snow on those mountains, we even saw snow up close in the various places we stopped at over the weekend, that tells me that we need warmer sleeping bags!

After breakfast we broke camp quite quickly and headed off home…

It was a loooong drive but we managed to miss any major traffic jams thanks to google maps. We stopped off at the supermarket and I picked up cake, if was my 7 year blogaversary after all! I was quite surprised to see a novelty cake here, which is odd, you would have thought the Japanese would go nuts for them!

So, that was that, Golden Week wrapped up for another year, our next camping date will be July! No need for winter sleeping bags then!

Toy's Kingdom…

The second full day at camp we decided to check out Toy's Kingdom. I think the park is actually better suited to younger children, there were lots of rides and Anpanman type of things going on. I should also say that I was feeling like death warmed up, so that may have clouded my judgement somewhat!

There were a few good activities for Ebi-kun, this was a wooded area with zip lines and giant swings plus rope ways and wobbly bridges. You get 30 minutes in there, which just happened to be the right amount of time!

Next up was the mini rollorcoaster, it loops around 3 times and I really don't think it was worth the 40 minutes wait time to get on…the boy may disagree!

Then we did the ferris wheel, Ebi-kun proclaimed that it was a baby one, after going on the London eye, I think most ferris wheels will now be babies. Did I mention how cold it was?

And I failed to get a photo of the best bit - a 3D maze. You have to pay an extra ¥500 each to go on but it was fun, it even got miss grumpy-pants here smiling for a while. Not suitable for those who are not very athletic! Lots of clambering and climbing, going up and down and finding trap doors. We all agreed that it was the best thing at the park. It does get super busy and we did have to wait quite a while to get in.

When we left the maze the heavens opened, at the point I really had had enough so we headed off for some lunch then the boys hit the onsen (thermal spring bath) normally I go in but I was feeling really rough at this stage.

Then it was back to camp for a slightly soggy BBQ and a really early night!

Camping Shenanigans…

We headed to the mountains in Gunma, near Karuizawa for this Golden Weeks camp and one of our bilingual playgroup families came with us. Sunday the weather was nice so we went to Oni-oshi-dashi which is a volcanic stone magma park.

The park was formed in 1783 when Mount Asama erupted, Oni in Japanese in devil and when the eruption happened the locals thought it was the devil throwing out the rocks from the mountain. Hard to believe these days…

It is a weird type of landscape, with large of strange shaped clumps of rock all around…

Two cheeky little devils…

After lunch Ebi-kun went fishing with N-kun, between them they caught 11 fish, it was the first time Ebi-kun had been and he was so excited that he had caught the biggest - not sure why N-kun is looking so glum (possible fed up of Ebi-kun and his big fish story!)

The people at the fishing place prepared the fish then N-kuns dad BBQ'd them. You know how much I love fish (not!) and I can honestly say that it absolutely stank! Ebi-kun loved it though and being aware of how food ends up on his plate is really important.

Dinner was more BBQ, admittedly after all that fish there wasn't much space for anything else, except…

 Giant marshmallows!

We also managed to squeeze in some educational stuff. He wanted to know how torches work - the type you would use if you were suddenly transported back to the middle ages, not the electric variety. A long stick, toilet roll and cooking oil did the trick! 

After all that we had a very tired little fella! It was REALLY bloody cold up there at night, so we ended up zipping the two adult sleeping bags together, and all getting in, Ebi-kun was in his sleeping bag in a bag! And we had extra blankets but it was still cold! Decent sleeping bags are going on my wish list for next year!

Officially The Best Weekend Ever!

It was a three day holiday last weekend so we went camping. We went to a site we have been to before, Nagurkankou near Hanno. it is in a lovely spot and has a beautiful river running through it. This is the view from  the tent...

At the site there is the 'free camp' which mean you can pitch your tent anywhere in the designated area, this is where we went, there was only one other group the first night and we had the whole place to ourselves the second night. There are also cabins which usually get booked out and the auto camp where you park next to your tent, and yes it is convenient but it is like camping in the car park! The downside to the free camp is that you have to cart all your gear over a dodgy bridge and up some steps, that said, it is worth it.

We had friends come out for Saturday and they left late Sunday, Ebi-kun loved having his mates there, there were lots of water fights...

Making 'onsens' and exploring, Saturday night they all slept out under the stars, by dinner time Sunday, Ebi-kun was exhausted and just kept begging to go to bed!

Most of the river is paddling depth but there are a few deeper spots which is where the kids practice swimming, there are also fish and tadpoles to be caught - yes, we have more pets now!

The water is sparkling clear, it also works perfectly for me, I burn very easily and get sunstroke but here I can stay in the shade and keep an eye on the kids, there is always part of the river which is shady.

We came to this spot 2 years ago, Ebi-kun wouldn't jump off the rock without holding daddy's hand then, this time he was all for it. I was using Ebi-kun camera because it is waterproof but I haven't figured out all the settings yet, this was the best water jump pic I got.

Saturday the place was pretty quiet but Sunday, we were invaded by day trippers, that said, there was still plenty of space to play and it tended to the other part of the river, near the auto-camp which was really busy. Lot of drunken 'young folk' but by 5 o'clock the day trippers had all gone home and we had the run of the place again.

One of the things that I love about this site is that there is NO entertainment for the kids other than nature, they have to find their own entertainment, the kids were totally happy to spend all day messing around in the river. It was great to see kids just being kids, no ipads, DS or any other gadgets, the only one I saw was a grumpy looking mom with a smartphone watching a show or film, completely ignoring her kids, so very sad.

Perfect spot for practicing a bit of yoga....

Other than lugging all the camp equipment to the top of the campsite, the only other downside is that the supermarket is miles away, so you have to be super organised (good job that is my super-power!) Ebi-kun declared that it was The Best Weekend EVER. 

Great weekend, great company, can't wait to do it all again.

Golden Week Camp PT 2 - German beer farm

When we go camping we usually take a day trip or two to a local event or attraction. My husband - a lover of beer discovered that there was a German Beer Farm not too far from where we were staying, so guess where we went?

 The place did look like a German market place and they had several beers and different food for sale.

It was a strange kind of 'farm' we had a go on the pedal boats - it is now clear why 7 years olds are not allowed to drive cars! We also tried our hand at archery and watched the sheep dog demonstration.

It was fairly busy but not depressingly so, we had some German sausages and potatoes for lunch, non of us were hungry enough to warrant going to the restaurant.

Ebi-kun also had fun on the big slide, you pay for 20 minutes of slip sliding fun. We realised that there were loads of other 'farms' dotted around, the Da Vinci farm sounded interesting, we will have to head back this way to find out about the others!

Orange Camp Cakes - recipe

I saw this idea on pinterest and thought it looked fun!

What you need:
1 orange per person
cake mix (I used hotcake mix & cocoa powder) + whatever you need to make the cake mix
Foil
Hot BBQ

First, fit the orange on a flat surface, it should stand up better one way, cut the top off. Scrap the insides out of the orange - you can eat this as you go if you like. Place each orange on a piece of foil.

Follow the instructions for the cake mix, then spoon the mix into the orange, leave some space at the top for the cake to rise. Pop the lid back on they wrap with foil.

Place the oranges in the hot embers, we left ours for about 30 minutes, you might need to turn them round half way through.

Unwrap and check that the cake is cooked..

And eat! Our oranges were really sweet but after they were cooked they became quite bitter which meant the end result was rather like marmalade cake, it wasn't very chocolatey either, next time I think I will try a dollop of nutella in there! Made a change from smores and baked bananas anyway :)

Golden Week Camp PT 1

We headed up to Gunma for this years Golden Week camp, it is a campsite we have been to before but we were there in the autumn last time. It is a nice site, well designed, clean toilets! There is no onsen or shower but they give you discount tickets for a local onsen. 

The only time we eat a full English breakfast is when we are at camp, I have a trangia stove which I LOVE (I used to have one back my scouting days, it is such a versatile little stove) and I have the whole full breakfast down to perfect now!

This Ebi-kun having his hobbit style seconds out in the morning sun. We were blessed with beautiful weather although it was COLD at night and we really need to get something warmer than the light weight sleeping bags that we have got at the moment.

The campsite has a good playground for the kids and on the last day (why do they always wait until the last day?) he made friends with some kids two tents down and they went to play there together.

Ebi-kun will probably say that learning to use a knife was the highlight of the trip, he is quite sensible for a kid but still a child so he is only allowed to use it with supervision for now, until we are happy that he really knows how to handle it properly.

The main drawback for this site is that the nearest supermarket is well, a glorified convenience store and the nearest big supermarket is about 40 minutes drive away. So even if you just want to hang out at the campsite all day, you still need to take a long drive out to get supplies. We combined it with a trip to the onsen. We got there when it opened but it was already busy - other campers with the same idea! Usually at an onsen there is a row of seats and showers for washing before you soak in the bath, because it was busy, all the indoor showers were busy so I was forced to use the ones in the garden area Brrrrr. 

Sunsets, beers and BBQ's, that's what it is all about! 

and of course roasted marshmallows or smores! can't wait until the next camp!