When
our children where four, eight and twelve years old, my husband said:
Now we will go to Japan.
I went to the library to borrow plenty of books about Japan to
understand
what
Into the land known for its
many big earthquakes.
It
would be too expensive to travel by air with five people, so we
decided
to take the long way, through Finland, Russia and Siberia.
After I had prepared many things at home before leaving,
we should stay away
at least one year, we started to make up plans for this long journey in
all details.
It wasn't an easy task to travel, with three small children around
half of the Earth.
Five
big trunks where packed very carefully, one to each of us, in the manner
to
be able to find important things during the 10 days travelling.
We started by train from Karlstad to Stockholm
In Stockholm we spend the night at my husbands sisters house.
The next
morning we entered the boat going to Helsinki in Finland.
After that the journey continued for additional 20 hours by train
before we
arrived
at Moskva
In that train it was very nice, with lace curtains and read carpets on
the floors,
but there was no food, only tea from a big samovar and sweat cookies.
In this manner
it was anxiety having three hungry children.
On
a station in the middle of Russia we could leave
the train for a moment very quickly
and buy some bread and
a greasy chicken, which the children could eat
We
our selfs where
In
Moskva we stayed for two days before we could continue the travel.
This
time we got on by a Russian propeller driven aeroplane which brougth us
all the way
over Siberia, against the eastern sun.
This journey lasted
for eight hours
and we arrived at Kabarovsk, very tired after
having lost six hours
by flying against the East.
After
this a 20 hour long track followes, again by train, all the way
through the
Mongoli.
We arrived in Nahodka, a city
near a harbour by the Japanese sea.
There we entered the
biggest ship we ever had seen,
to cross the ocean between the northern islands
of Japan,
Hokkaido and Honshu.
On this ship we experienced an incredible tempest with extremely
high waves and
a high turbulence
after an earthquake below the oceansurface. A strong
seasickness
hit
us but after recovering we felt
great again when we, after 54 hours of sailing,
arrived
the port of Yokohama.
As
soon as we got off the ship we where kindly received by friendly Japanese people
who welcomed us with a flying Swedish flag and they drove us in a big, black limo
to
the Hilton Hotel in the middle of Tokyo. There
we rested for several days.
Our hosts took care of us in a wonderful way of
kindness.
Later on, we travelled up country.
on the
Honshu-Island. We stay there for several months in a little house
of our own,
beautifully appointed in a Japanese style.
On the floors were carpets made by seagras and the walls by rice paper.
After
a while we left the place and moved on
to the South of Japan, an island called
Shikuku.
Also here we had a house
of our own near by a gulf of the Pacific Ocean.
We
became friends with the kindest people ever known.
Our
two oldest children, Birgit and Ulla-Britt, visited
American and Canadian schools, there all teaching
was preformed in the English language.
The youngest
one, Björn,
was able to learn the Japanese language
most perfectly in a very short time.
All the time in that wonderful
country gave us an experience,
which last for a lifetime to
all of us.
We whiches very much to return some
day.
Little Remark:
We made this journey 1969
My husband worked in Japan as an
Erection Supervisor in paper bleaching.