My wife and I, and our six year old son arrived in Karuizawa from Tokyo by coach.
“This is the stop for the onsen!” announced the driver.
All of the other remaning passengers got off, leaving just us sitting alone.
“Aren’t you getting off?” asked the driver.
“No, we are going one more stop,” said my wife. “I think that’s what it said you had to do to get to the nature walk on the web site, anyway.” She sounded uncertain.
“To the depot?” said the driver. “Well, okay.”
So we continued past the tourist areas and on to the coach depot. There was no nature walk there, just some coaches, a vending machine, and some drivers drinking Boss coffee. So we had to walk for about twenty-five minutes back to the onsen stop we had just passed, on a narrow leave strewn path beside the highway, being constantly passed by noisy, smelly trucks. At least it wasn’t raining.
A little tired from our walk along the highway, we found the tourist area. We had pizza for lunch. My son insisted on having chocolate and banana pizza. Then we took part in a two hour nature walk in the forest with a guide.
“My binoculars are broken,” complained my son. “I can’t see anything.”
“That’s because you are putting your eyes to the wrong end,” explained the guide. “Try turning them around and you will be able to see things more clearly.”
The nature walk was a lot of fun. The guide pointed out different animal tracks, birds and insects, and explained something about each.
He pointed out two lines of ants – one line climbing up a tree, and the other line coming down. The bodies of the ants in the line coming down were bigger than the ones going up. So they were having their lunch at the top of the tree.
The guide pointed out some claw marks on another tree, which had been made by a bear as it climbed, looking for cherries. My son shook his bell frantically to keep the bears away.
Our holiday was almost ruined the next day by arithmetic.
“Ask me an arithmetic question,” said my son, as we walked around some shops.
I gave him some problems, such as 12 times 12 and 14 times 14, which he got right. Then I asked him to do 17 times 17.
His answer was wrong, and I told him so.
“No, Daddy! You are wrong!”
He refused to accept that he was wrong, or accept any help in solving the problem. He was in a bad mood for about six hours because of 17 times 17. Eventually, after tears and tantrums in a burger restaurant, he accepted that even he could sometimes make mistakes.
“Daddy made a mistake when he went for breakfast without his mask, and we all had to go back to our room on the third floor to get it. Mummy made a mistake when she took us to the depot. And I made a mistake when I did 17 times 17.”
I don’t like onsens. Hot baths make me feel ill. So instead of the hotel hot spring, I’ll
always associate Karuizawa with a family stroll around the local coach depot,
chocolate and banana pizza, ants with full bellies, and the number 289.
Vocabulary:
to ramble – this has two meanings. One meaning of ramble is to walk for pleasure
in the countryside. The other meaning is
to talk or write at length in a confused way, or about unimportant topics
a depot – this word comes from French, so
the pronunciation is French. The final
“t” is not pronounced. A depot is a
place where large vehicles such as buses or trains are kept and maintained when
they are not in use.
to be strewn (with leaves) – untidily
scattered (with leaves)
frantically – in a hurried way because of
strong fear or anxiety
arithmetic – the manipulation of numbers by adding, subtracting, multiplying, etc.
