Away! Away!

We went AWAY for the weekend!
And Okaasan coped!
Oh total bliss - 48 hours of escape as a couple, without Okaasan.
WE ordered in delivery food for her, we left her food in hot flasks on the table. We left her notes and a photograph explaining about a strange woman coming into the house to care for the cats...and we telephoned many, many times to check she was understanding it all and not in a depressed fug.


Came home Sunday afternoon to find all the empty delivery food packets etc still around the kitchen and a terrible stench of urine in Okaasan's room with half washed pants and trousers in the bathroom.


But the house was standing. And Okaasan was safely by the TV.


It was ok.
Shall be trying THAT again :-)


And the weekend? Wonderful.
As Japan sadly remembered the horrors of a year ago, we drove away from the somber TV memorial programs into the spring sunshine, over the mountains to Niseko ski resort.

My birthday will always be on the anniversary of Japan's Great East Earthquake and last year for my 50th it was a surreal weekend of sorrow and selfish happiness. So this year I wanted to get AWAY and be in a bubble of happiness.
Niseko is one of Japan's big ski resorts, about 2 hours from where we live. I haven't skied here for about 5 years, and I haven't stayed here for more than 10 years. It was where Yujiro had HIS ski accident 4 years ago, where he was in hospital for 2 months. I used to drive out and see him twice a week.
Niseko's changed and I wanted to see that for a weekend. 15 years ago it was a sleepy Japanese resort, whose glory days had been in the ski boom of the 70s and 80s.

Then an Australian skier came to work there and open an adventure tours business - now it's a happening international resort, with Chinese investment companies fighting eachother to buy up land for ritzy apartment complexes and fresh-faced young foreigners working a season in restaurants and bars.
And we celebrated my 51 the birthday.
Sunshine, okay-enough snow conditions, a hot spring in the hotel, foooood, views...and then MORE skiing.


The best thing?
My knee stayed good for over 8 hours of skiing.!!!!! Yeah. I feel I am coming back to a normal life!!!!
And he and I recaptured a little of what we once were - before Okaasan came to live with us - just a couple who enjoyed skiing.
We spend so much time having "who's doing dinner/lunch box/shopping?" conversations and locked into the weekly routines of home and work and care....just being the two of us for a whole 48 hours.
Very precious.

NOT a tofu dinner....

Meat...oh my..meeeeaaaaaaat.

No time for a pre-birthday haircut.