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Election Day (in Japan)
Japan’s democratic process is quite different to the one that drags on in the US. Today is a parliamentary election, called by Prime Minister Ishiba when he dissolved the House of Representatives just eight days after he took office. The run up to the election has been 26 days. Campaigning is a lot more civil…
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Swearing Lesson
Working with some difficult first year high school students on a two-day experience program, I decided to mollify them at the end of yesterday by promising to teach them some English swear words today. Advocating swear words has been a minor roles in my life. I’ve always been a fan of cussing. When I was…
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Tanada by Torchlight
For one night each year, the Oyama Senmaida terraced fields are lit by fire. It was tonight and today I got to help with the 200 students who came from Tokyo to help with the experience. Many people spent time in the past weeks preparing the materials – chopping bamboo, counting wicks, cleaning parts, and…
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Camera Roll
A roundup of little things I’ve observed in the past few weeks – none big enough for their own feature, but worth remembering anyway. Over at Oyama Senmaida, school experiences are back in full swing and I’ve been busy with papermaking and straw craft, but that’s not all. I suggested rearranging things at Gonbei, and…
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Overwhelmingly Messy Studio
Sometimes, I put myself in a situation where I am paralysed by my own diverse interests. Take the studio (please!) as a good example. This table contains a lot of projects in progress to the point where I have piled them up to get the out of the way of other things and then piles…
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Long Drive
Don’t travel on a holiday weekend. Traffic is awful. We knew that, yet chose to drive from Chiba to Niigata. I am glad we did. It was a marathon on the way up. We left at 6 am and I drove the first four hours through various slowdowns and jams until we got past the…
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Jade Coast Adventures
After a solid night’s sleep in Nojiriko, we took a short walk on the Zou-no-Komichi – the Elephant’s Path – to stretch our legs and see the view. What a vista! Before hopping on the highway to Itoigawa and the Jade Coast, we had a photo op with the Zous at the Naumann Elephant statue.…
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Naumann Zou
I checked off a bucket list item yesterday by visiting the Lake Nojiri Naumann Elephant Museum. Years ago, Tod and I learned there had been elephants roaming Japan in the Ice Age. We said we’d go see their stomping grounds someday. The museum is nicely put together, with multilingual audio guides and lots of details…
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1,104,537,600 seconds
More than a billion seconds. That’s a pretty long time. 18,408,960 minutes to be equally precise. That means it’s been thirty five years since Tod & I stood in front of a judge in Pittsburgh and said our vows. Now we are celebrating our jade anniversary. I could write a bunch about the longevity of…
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Signs of Autumn
The two-meter tall ginger is in full bloom outside the kitchen window. Its scent is intoxicating. Hummingbird hawk-moths visit at dawn and dusk to enjoy the nectar. After a long break for summer, Beryl is enjoying her favorite cozy beanbag in the barn. She’s also crawling under the bed covers to sit on me in…
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