Everywhere and Everywhere else Who says that the adventure stops once you have kids?

“Mommy, I am tired of having cereal for breakfast,” said SB as he sat slumped over his bowl and I was trying to pack suitcases before rushing off to work. “Uh, I think in about two weeks you will be wishing for that bowl of cereal,” I answered. We are off again, this time for a month in Japan. We will be flying standby, hopefully, on Saturday to Osaka where we will be staying in the beginning with L. and her son I.

We decided about two weeks ago to make the trip because we have friends (he French, she Japanese) who will be travelling to Japan in August. Do they want us to be tagging along? At this point they seem rather enthusiastic, but we haven’t gotten there yet, and we don’t know if the phone number that they gave us (as in, yeah, sure, give us a call.) actually works.

But they are not L.and I. 

JN found L and I on a home exchange website. Since we really did not have time to plan this trip, we did not have time to set up a proper home exchange. So this time we will be staying off and on with L and I at their apartment outside of Osaka during the month of August and they will come sometime in the future and stay will us in France.

We have also made tentative arrangements with a Jamaican teacher in Nagoya to stay at her apartment for a week (she wants to stay with JN's family in Paris, his mom is game) and we have a Mr Wanabe from Nara who has been sending us strangely translated messages inviting us to what we think is a festival on what we believe to be August 12th. All that I am sure of is that his wife is Catholic and that in exchange she wants to visit Lourdes that is not that far from where we live in France.

With that being the extent of our plans, we have borrowed guidebooks a-plenty, have three weeks worth of rail passes in our possession and are looking forward to a month of being helplessly lost and constantly befuddled as we crisscross the land of the rising sun.

I just hope that SB will like eating hot soup for breakfast. (Any bets on when he will be begging for rice crispies?)