Golden Week "Aisatsu"

My name is Mike and I live in between worlds.
No, I'm not a kook or a time traveler ... well, not exactly. But, I do live in a rural city in Japan, near a World Heritage ancient pilgrimage route, near or between many cultural paradoxes -- a perfect place for an observer, an escapist, a daydreamer.
My children are American and Japanese nationals. We live in my wife's hometown.
I am renting a house. I'm 41. I just bought my first new car.
My neighborhood includes new and old houses, swallows, sparrows and bush warblers, cats, and many older people. Only a handful of children still remain, and they never do for long.
My son just started first grade. His school is a 10-minute walk. There are 29 kids in his class, and only one first grade class in the school.
My daughter is two and goes to WAMPAKU (literally, "wild child") HOIKUSHO where she collects acorns, twigs and flowers, searches for spiders and butterflies, and runs amock barefooted in the mud and across hardwood school floors.
It is Golden Week, a series of holidays in early May, where most of Japan is on the move and clogging the roads, but we are off today to buy tomatoes and flowers to plant, to grow something, to be together.