in the valley of love..

For the past year my daughter Pip has been in Japan. Chikusa, the village in Hyogo where she's lived and taught lies in a deep valley more than five hours to the west of Tokyo and is reached by rail and road. The first picture she sends home comes via her mobile phone on the afternoon she arrives and is the view from her first floor window. Mountains and forest, rice fields, a narrow road winding across the valley like a pale yellow scarf, a bridge with wooden railings and two trees beyond the rice fields in the shape of lollypops.

At the local junior high school she commences her teaching career and in the tiny rural community regarded by many as the Tibet of western Japan, her year begins to unfold. Sorachi-san, the elderly neighbour in the downstairs flat becomes the friend with whom she walks in the evenings after school as well as the friend who shows her how to separate rubbish into six different groups. Hashimoto-san the school tea lady leaves a note on her desk "There are many extra milk in refrigerator. Would you like use home?" and takes her to her son's baseball game where the crowd sings R-R-R-R-RR! to the tune of We-will-we-will-rock-you! Pip joins the Chikusa choir and learns to play taiko drums and makes chocolate truffles for her students and all along the way in her phone calls and emails she takes us with her. Her brothers and her dad and I move around the Chikusa valley like shadows following sunlight. Her stories are the dances that take her away and bring her home. On the first weekend of July she swims in the Sea of Japan and in the last batch of photos we receive, there she is, grin from ear to ear, in her board shorts and t-shirt standing by the water pretending to surf.

Now after a year in Japan it's time for her to leave.
This morning, twelve months and two days since she left Australia I woke to an email from her, written at Changi airport as she waited for a flight to Edinburgh where she'll be for a month or so.

quickie frm changi‏


To: mum

woke up at seven, feelin kinda strange, bare walls, fridge etc.. a shell.. having my mornin coffee i noticed a few students walking down the hill from school, then a few more, and before i knew it, all of them were walking..... hmmm...... ohmyGOD!! they came to my apartment ma, the WHOLE school, staff too, to send me off, give presents, sing the school song!!!!!! can you even comprehend how overwhelmed i was/ still am???

love you, speak soon..




I read her message over and over and let the pictures roll in my head. If I could I'd have been there too, singing that song at her door.