Strawberries

Last Saturday was sunny and warm and with nothing better to do, we all piled into Daddy's car and drove the 40 minutes or so to Sobetsu.

Sobetsu is a small town famous for its fruit farms. Depending on the season you can sugar out on strawberries, grapes, cherries, blueberries, plums, peaches and apples. Cian wants to move there.

Sobetsu is also situated in a bowl like valley which means it gets hot, very hot, Dante's Inferno like hot.

No, really.

When we left Muroran it was a nice, easy 20°C - the sort of temperature that engenders a feeling of well being and mint juleps. By the time we got to that little bit of Renaissance Italy, the temperature had crested 30°C and was still climbing. That sort of temperature is good for strawberries, sweat and eternal damnation.

But Cian wanted his juicy red fruit and so, scrambling to get to the greenhouses ahead of a tour bus full of Singaporean tourists, we ran and panted and ate our fill of red, ripe strawberries.

And then we all got sore bellies, so we had to, yes, had to stop at the home-made ice cream restaurant for medicinal purposes.

And then we went home, or rather, Daddy drove home while the rest of the sated Gaynor-Takahashi family fell asleep in Daddy's car.