Inconceivably I sit here to type this with only two weeks left in Tokyo. How we have found ourselves hurtling towards the end of our stay so fast is a mystery to me. We are still having lots of fun, "making the most of it", but also finding some things are tricker than we expected. I definitely don't want to sound like we aren't appreciating this amazing experience we are having, but I do want to share that it's not all sunshine and roses either. Some parts are hard, and that's just the way it is. No matter how brightly I put the shine on when I type about the latest festival we went too, or cool Japanese thing we saw, there are downsides too.
When we realised our time in Tokyo was coming to an end, we looked at the calendar a lot; boy did it fill up fast. The girls had a Guide camp, Rachel had school camp and Steve had a Mt Fuji climb all scheduled in the same two week period. There was so much happening! Since the girls were going to be at Guide camp together, Steve and I looked at having a night away as well. We choose Enoshima Island, which is on the other side of Tokyo, out by the beach at Kamakura. I'd been wanting to go, but since it was so far away, it hadn't made our list. I will say that adding it to the already packed fortnight didn't really make anything easier.
Then we got the news that the guide camp might not go ahead, if it was too hot. There was all sorts of back and forth about what constitutes "too hot" and what the changes would look like. They told me that too hot would mean that they wouldn't stay the night, but that we'd have to pick up the girls, take them home and bring them back the next day. We also decided that hiring a car would make things simpler, because we'd be able to drop the girls to the park in 20 mins, rather than the hour long train/bus ride. We thought it was worth the risk of having to come back and get them if it was indeed "too hot". So we booked.
Car hire turned out to be expensive, maybe because it always is, or maybe because there was a Japanese public holiday on the Monday, so lots of people were capitalising on the three day weekend. Anyway, we booked the car, triple checking the weather forecast, which was looking in our favour - a sunny day of 33 degrees was actually quite mild compared to what we'd been having. Then the day before they were due to go, the guides messaged to say that it was indeed going to be too risky (heat stroke!) and that they were changing plans. But not to the "let's not sleepover" plan. The new plan was to start at 3:30pm, rather than 10am.
Even with a car, getting out to Enoshima after doing that drop off was going to be a pretty big waste of time, especially with pick up the next day being 12. Sigh. Dealing with the changing plans was fatiguing to say the least. We'd already gone through three weeks of "go vs don't go" scenarios and planning. Then to have to change it all again when we had thought we were nearly clear was frustrating to say the least.
On top of this was Steve's hand. Steve has been an avid BJJ attendee in Japan, but one night at the start of July, he put his hand down during drilling and managed to actually break a bone in his hand. At first he thought he'd just jared something, but five days after and finding it was still painful and bruising meant a trip to the doctor with Google Translate on hand. Luckily it was his left hand, and a fairly clean break; no surgery required. But it's going to take six weeks to heal and hiking up a mountain isn't advisable.
After months of training, research and preparation, suddenly it didn't seem like climbing Japan's most iconic mountain would be possible. More "on again, off again" feels as we thought through the logistics of it all. Was it really over or still possible?
Meanwhile Steve and I were finding it really hard to parent the girls, because Rachel was coming home spouting new Japanese left right and centre which we wanted to encourage, but Sophie was feeling more and more defeated at her Japanese learning. How to praise one without the other feeling neglected?
With only weeks to go at their Japanese school, our two girls were experiencing some very different emotions. Rachel was starting to realise the friends she'd made were going to be hard to keep in contact with, and that she'd miss the girls from her class who called by after school so often to play in the park together. She worked hard to write notes for each of them, and her teacher, and then was emotional at the shops wanting to buy them all presents as well and not having enough money.
Sophie was the opposite. The days could not go fast enough for her. School had been tougher than she'd thought and she'd found it hard to connect with her teacher and peers, so she was ready for it to be over. I did encourage her to try to write even basic thank you notes with her address for people who had been kind to her, but she refused. Then, on the last day, everyone was saying goodbye and wanting to have her sign things to remember her by and she realised that it would have been good to have something after all.
My goodness the bumpy road of navigating all of this was and is tricky to say the least. We are trying to stay positive and "make the most of it" as best we can, but our frustration this last couple of weeks has been pretty high. As we head towards the end of our Tokyo time, I'm feeling sad that we will be saying goodbye to now our familiar neighbourhood and also ready for some new scenery.
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