The Longest Day

To mark the return of sunshine and the longest day of the year, we took ourselves off to Lake Shikotsu near Chitose last Saturday. While Daddy spent two frustrating, curse-filled hours trying to assemble his folding kayak (you trying do it with a set of badly photocopied instructions in Japanese), Cian and Sanae were making peace with the watery world around them. I eventually got the damn thing assembled and paddled around the lake for a bit without sinking, but by that time it was getting dark so I only managed a 40 minute session. Cian in the meantime was intent on depleting the lake's entire stock of fish but Mammy insisted on a catch-and-release policy.

Of the two lakes we visit in the summer, I prefer Shikotsu. The other one, Lake Toya, has more cafes, a very good bakery and the occasional farmer's market and thus appeals more to Sanae; but it also has crowds and a rather daft policy of permitting jet skis on the lake which, to my jaundiced occidental eye, sits rather oddly with it's designation as a national park. Lake Toya also has a series of monolithic hotels from the brutalist school of architecture dominating one of the shorelines. In summer this area has a firework extravaganza every single night for three months. Lord knows what the local wildlife must make of it. Mind you given how noisy the jet skis are roaring back and forth across the lake, there either well used to the noise or deaf.
Lake Shikotsu, by contrast, is where you have a better chance of brushing up against the sublime. Jet skis are banned, there are only a few small onsen hotels and guesthouses corralled away on one corner of the lake and much of the shore is inaccessible by car (Lake Toya has a road ringing its entire circumference). Thus it doesn't take much walking or paddling to leave the modern world behind and get lost (sometimes literally) in nature's quiet splendor.
And finally... Friday had been our wedding anniversary and we asked Cian to take a picture of us to commemorate the day. I think the boy nailed it.