Kenny driving the Mercedes-Benz that I brought from Germany
Last month I took a couple of weeks holiday from the stable and went back to Japan, to catch up with my family and friends.
It had been 6 months since last time I saw my wife and son (they live in Japan and visited Germany last May), I felt like I was a little kid counting the days until the Christmas before flying over to Japan.
The reason we’ve living separately is so that our son, Kenny who is turning 3 soon, can learn the Japanese language properly while I’m training in Germany, since he was picking up more English than Japanese when we were living in Australia.
I noticed his improvement of his speaking when I got home. We were watching TV together, a program about the trains. I said ‘’Kenny, which “train” do you like?” He said “No dad, they are not trains, they are Densha!!”(Densha means “trains” in Japanese) He certainly got his Japanese alright…
The beautiful temple Toshogun
I had a fair bit of free time, so I went to the temple “Toshogun” where the king of the Samurai is buried. This is a special place for me. I went there with the school trip when I was 12, and I still clearly remember there was a white horse in the special stable in this temple, and this was the first time I’ve ever seen a real horse in my life.
I wasn’t expecting that there would be the same white horse still living there, but I just wanted to see the white horse again to bring back my old memories.
The white horse's stable
And there was the white horse in the special stable when I visited there this time. Now there was even a sign explaining about the white horse. It said “This white horse is owned by the spirit of the Samurai here and he has the duties of looking after this temple”
But I noticed the small print on this sign at the bottom.
“This horse was born in New Zealand”
Yep, he did look like a retired racehorse!!
Anyway, I had a great time in Japan and back in Germany now. Hope everyone had a great Christmas and all the best for 2014!
Daiki
