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After the rain
Yesterday our rain gauge captured a record amount of daily rain, 179.9mm. It wasn’t a typhoon, but a hard, steady rain all day long. Around town there were floods and landslides causing road closures until they were cleared. Landslide evacuation level 4. Perhaps an abundance of caution, but after last month’s linear rainband causing 8…
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Senior Discounts, Japan-style
Respect for the Aged holiday is coming up soon (3rd Monday in September) and if you are over 60, 65, or 70 you might be able to snag discounts at restaurants and shops. In the US “senior discounts” are a standing joke but now that I am the right age for them, I wondered if…
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Kamogawa’s High Taxes?
A recent comment from a neighbor about Kamogawa’s taxes being high piqued my curiosity. Does Kamogawa charge more tax than other places? The answer is complicated, but I learned quite a lot about how taxes are levied and also what might have been behind the feeling that our taxes are high. Residence Tax 住民税 Jumin…
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Turmeric Anthotypes and beyond
In about 6 weeks, I will be leading a workshop featuring “nature art” at the Oyama Senmaida harvest festival. Last year we explored a variety of ways to get color from plants and earth. This year, something different: anthotypes. (antho, flower + type, print) It’s a fancy word for capturing shadows by sun-bleaching botanical emulsions.…
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Camera Roll
Another couple of months in photos from my Instagram Stories. Week by week the seasons change while daily life remains “same-same but different.” Scroll to see nature (including my best ever photos of a snail and a grasshopper) and art. Always plenty of cats.
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Late Summer in Inaka
Every summer on the 2nd Saturday of August, seven local temples parade their mikoshi to Oyama Fudoson to pray for rain to swell the rice before harvest. I think it worked this year. We’ve had rain. A lot of rain. Earlier this week, Typhoon 15 made landfall in Ibaraki prefecture and also dropped a heavy…
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A: One board at a time
Q: How does an old lady tear down a barn? This morning was unexpectedly cool and I went out to (attempt to) weed the garden. Before long, I was sitting on the ground facing the barn. The naya is scheduled to come down in the “sometime soon” future with a rough start date that came…
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Festival Spider
When my sister read my previous post, she wrote some encouragement to me. Not a classic “you can do it” message, instead it reframed my perception of my role at Kozuka Art Festival. You are the spider of the festival. You have put yourself in a shady spot where there are trees and tenderness to…
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Kozuka Art Festival 2026 (first half)
Art festival in the forest! A magical week full of artists arriving and displaying their wares and their work. Restaurants come to us on a daily rotation. There are performances and impromptu encounters. Workshops, crafts for sale, art on display. It’s very cool. But from my point of view, its been a lonely four days.…
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Inserting My Voice in Art Writing
When I write my workbooks for Drawing Meditations, I make them more like a series of worksheets than a book: spare and succinct with emphasis on instructions over descriptions of the outcome. It clearly reflects how I teach art. My teacher’s instinct is to let the student discover their own path to creative insights. I…
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