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Harvest #1
I mentioned yesterday to Kawasaki-san that the monkeys were snacking on the Kobayashi mikan. I’d seen them in the tree and found orange peels scattered around the garden. When the monkeys start eating your fruit, it is probably ripe. Not one to put things off, the Kawasakis turned up this morning to harvest. I grabbed…
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Demystifying our Mikan
555 is chockablock with citrus trees. There is a yuzu in the front garden, a kumquat over by the hatake, and our Kobayashi mikan. We added a lemon and a lime to the mix this year. And there are four mystery citrus. Probably some kind of natsumikan, a sour orange that ripens in early summer…
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More Maura Walks
Maura’s visit to the vet yesterday did not include taking his stitches out. We have to wait another week. I almost cried; I am sleep deprived from adventuring. You know how in fantasy novels, the author glosses over the long arduous journey: “They made fast for Thoradil, changing horses and riding through the night, arriving…
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8mm wonders from 1976
A school mate from Pennsylvania posted a couple of 8mm transfers to YouTube this week. What a time capsule treasure of fashion and location. In one of them, I found both myself (age 10) and my sister (age 7). I had to watch a few times to be sure that girl on the film was…
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The Dragon is Roaring
January 1st: Magnitude 7.6 earthquake rips the land, topples buildings, blazes neighborhoods, and cuts off power to a hundred thousand of households in Ishikawa prefecture. Tsunami waves over a meter high hit the coast. January 2nd: There is a fiery plane crash at Haneda when a JAL flight from Hokkaido hits a Coast Guard plane…
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Chasing the first sunrise
The Land of the Rising Sun makes an event of the first sunrise of the year, with news articles and maps highlighting sunrise times and the scenic places to see it. The earliest sunrise in mainland Japan (excluding the top of Mt Fuji) was at 6:44 this morning on Mt Kiyosumi in my own town…
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Happy 2024
Wishing you all the best in the year of the Dragon. And here’s a peek at the creative process and rejected designs for this 11th in the “Elephant as Zodiac Animal” series:
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Spicy osouji
The tradition in Japan is to end the year with all your slates clean: bills and debts paid, gratitude given, and house and grounds thoroughly cleaned. This year I have managed none of that. But I did tackle a task today, in the eleventh hour, that’s been on my list for six months. I wrangled…
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25 words
Another long-running annual tradition, this is my 23rd time summing up my year in 25 words exactly. House-building decisions had my attention through nine months creating our big cedar baby. Despite yoga, I spiraled down; then started Atenolol and felt myself again. Here are the others in reverse chronological order: 2022: Wondrous days at 555…
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2023 with friends
I have great friends who I don’t take a lot of photos of. I didn’t get a single shot of Noopur and Kenneth when they visited from India. Two snaps of friends from America; maybe half a dozen of Jo who stayed with us for weeks! Here are some of the moments I managed to…
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