Reia and the henna tattoo guy in Indonesia

This morning I stepped out of McDonalds next to our local train station and took a deep breath. It was raining lightly, and the air was crisp and fresh. For a moment,  I remembered the feeling of being at 10,000 feet at the crest of the Sandia Mountains outside Albuquerque. I remembered gathering with others on hard packed snow under perfectly blue sky waiting for a cross-country ski race to begin. The air up there on such a day is amazing.

Then I wondered if my kids are missing something growing up in Tokyo. They’ve never been at the top of such a high mountain. In my childhood we seemed to be on the move all the time, always enjoying the outdoors in new ways. What a rich life that was after all.

Later I realized, with some help from my wife, that our oldest daughter is only in the third grade. At that age, I had never been on top of a mountain. I had lived in three states, twice in small towns, and as a toddler I had lived on a military base in Japan. But overall life looked pretty mundane.

But our kids have been mountain biking and kayaking for two years. Our oldest has gone kayaking down river rapids, and we weren’t even there to see it. They have been camping many times with and without us. Our oldest has lived in two countries, and they have all traveled with us to three other countries in Asia. This year we’ll spend Christmas in Cambodia. With a start like that, what kinds of experiences will our kids call “normal” by the time they reach high school?

I guess they’re not deprived after all. It’s funny how I missed that (most likely because mountains are weighted so heavily on my own list). They are only in danger of being so active they won’t ever learn to settle down…

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I started blogging more than five years ago. It’s amazing how quickly time passes as you get older. Reia was just a baby back then, but now she’s standing so tall and strong. Last weekend we went to our 3rd “zenkokutakai” (national competition) for Japanese kayaking kids. It’s a flatwater racing event, which is really not what our kids train for, but Reia has done well each time. This year she made it to the final, even though she’s competing against older girls (she’s a 3rd grader and the race is for 2nd – 4th grade girls).  She made it to the semifinal, which was a run-off between all the girls who didn’t automatically advance. She had the fastest time going in, and when she won it was like a light came on. She’d never had that experience before — crossing the line first in a big event. It reminds me of the first time I won a race, which was a life altering moment, at least for that time.

Smiling after her win

Waiting for the final

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This is a fun, zippy video of our kids’ kayaking event last weekend. If you click through and watch it in HD on the YouTube site, the quality is amazing (way to go YouTube!). Reia is #11. Her kayak is blue on top and bright yellow on bottom. She flips over a couple of times. Mari and Maika are the youngest ones, so they are riding in plastic kayaks (one yellow and the other green). The kids are really good. They start learning to roll their kayaks in the 4th grade, and one of the boys is on the Japanese Junior team with Olympic dreams. It’s been so fun letting our kids have experiences like this.

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