No HesFes or Kent camp this year. I thought we just have to go without camping this year as we don`t have any camping gears and a car.

But I found the campsite which I could rent the tent, pots and pans, chopping board and knives and dishes and spoons. It`s by the Settsu-kyo river(where I have put on my blog a couple times in a past) 20minutes on the bus, and even better, the camping fee was FREE! for the takatsuki citizens!!!

I HAD TO GO!!!

I needed to book at least a week before camping, and this place was built for the educations of young people by goverment, so there were some restrictions like No alcohol was allowed at all, No foods are allowed in the tent, Need to be quiet after 10 for other campers etc. But it was just kids and I were going and I don`t do alcohol, so it was no big deal.


I kept it minimum but still there were quite lots of things to take. It was big job to get to the bus stop! But my dad came in rescue, and he carried most stuff on his bycycle. In japan, even night time tempature is quite high around 26~28c. So we didn`t need to take anything bulky, even a sleeping bags.(we haven`t got one, so we just used bath towels to put over us)

After 20minutes of bus ride, we were front of the campsite.


According to this map, we can go around the road or can go short cut up the hill.

We took the short cut, but with our luggages, it was harder way.....

After 15minutes of climing, we got to the place and checked in and were shown where everything was.

This is the cooking place. 7 or 8 groups can cook at the same time.

This is the eating place.

And this is our tent!! It`s for 6 people, big enough for 3 of us. But back in England, the tent we have is massive! So when we saw this tent, we thought this is not good standered at all!

But no need of putting it up and down!!! Fab!

Around 4 o`clock, we started cooking. There was no Gas cooker, so we needed to cook on the fire.

we could buy logs for it there as we needed, so we started to chop things, wash rice and then made fire.

With kids help, things went really well.

The pot on the left is a rice pot. The pot on the right is a stewing pot.

This night we cooked Rice and Curry, very typical food for camping!

Hunny is serving. She really enjoyed helping around fire.

Japanese curry and Rice

After the dinner it was a camp fire time. We were located on fire place from 7 o`clock, so we hurried to there to have a mini campfire and fire works. This is right after cooking on fire, so I really didn`t feel like making more fire and get hot and sweaty. but campfire is a big part of the camp, so we did it anyway. good way of avoiding mosquitos!

Next day, we started from going for a walk in a woods. Just walked around, me in front kids behind booing about this walking idea!

But later they picked up their mood when they found a frog and started to chase it!

After lunch (left over curry) we decided to go to the river.

about 20 minutes walk to the river.... but it`s all stairs keep going down...

By the time we got to the bottom, my legs were shaking! and the thought of going back up made it worth!

And then when we saw the river, our shoulders dropped with thuds!

Too Many People!!!! This is no way of relaxing after that long walk!

We had a quick dip and left there soon as we need to cook on the fire again.

We managed to put one more cooking in the next morning.

And then we tidied up, packed, and checked out.

I didn`t want to leave yet, so stayed around for bit longer. I asked(or ordered?!) kids to draw some pictures, anything about camping while I read a book. Sounds like perfect Home Ed. moment.....

Without our conversations, looks perfect!!

With these people`s help, camping was very enjoyable!

The best thing was there were lot of insects to chase and catch!

Viz loved it!

He found Kuwagata (a stag beetle ) with help of these guys and brought home and now in the box with the beetle he won at the festival. The beetle from the festival is 2inch in length and the beetles he brought back from camping is just under a inch. I thought these are going to get killed very soon, but seem to be surviving well!