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In The Hague there is a l-a-r-g-e park called "Clingendael", and in this park there is a (much) smaller "Japanese Garden".
The garden is only open for 6 weeks every year, and I went there last weekend.
The garden is very nice, and it does have a Japanese "ambience", but there were *so* many visitors there that it was much too difficult to imagine that I was really in Japan.
Maybe I'll go again in a few weeks ... and hopefully it'll be much, much quieter.
Does the garden look "Japanese" to you ?
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I've been in a very "Japanese" mood for the past week, and so I've been reading "The Pure Land".
The book is a fictional novel about the time spent by a young Scottish businessman in Japan in 1850-1860 (with the background being the final days of the Shogun). The business-practices of the foreign businessmen in Japan at that time were horribly brutal and barbaric.
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There is a Japanese football-player, Shunsuke Nakamura, playing for the Scottish team Celtic, and a Japanese friend asked me to buy her an "authentic" Nakamura-football-shirt.
I bought the shirt for her ... but I really wonder if she'll like it !
I also wonder where she will wear the shirt !
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To continue the Japanese theme here, last week I went to an all-you-can-eat Japanese-buffet restaurant in my home-town. (Of course, the owners and the staff are all Chinese ... but the food really did taste quite "Japanese" to my uneducated-palate).
I ate so much ... that I felt quite unwell at the end of the meal - I was was just too greedy.
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My Pilates classes have finished for the next few months.
The club had *2* teachers, but both of them have now moved to different countries, and it's really not clear if another teacher will "emerge" from among the club-members.
I really hope so, because my body *really* needs these exercises.
My Japanese lessons will (hopefully) start again soon.
It's always difficult to learn a foreign language when one doesn't live in the country, and when one is not forced to speak, or confronted, with the language every day.
Hopefully the Summer-lessons will give me an opportunity to re-learn the things that I'm supposed to already know.
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I've been busy ( - yes, *again*) with my retirement-plans - only 3+ (?) years left to go.
I've been making financial calculations and checking the local-situation on the Internet web-forums, etc.
The whole idea of starting another life both excites me a little and **terrifies** me *a lot*.
Usually I don't like "change" of any kind, and this will be one of the biggest changes in my life.
- "One day" this Blog will be written in a *different* country.
[I hope that at that time **you** will still be reading it "out there" ('somewhere', wherever you are at that time) -- Please don't "leave" me !].
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