by kuri | Jan 1, 2020 | Japan, Personal Reflections
Welcome to the year of the rat. This is the 6th in the “new year elephant zodiac” series, starting with year of the horse in 2014. This year we did not send nengajo because of Mom’s death but I wanted to keep the elephant series...
by kuri | Dec 31, 2019 | Personal Reflections
All shall be well but I’m overwhelmed with love and loss. Mom’s with my ghostly siblings and ancestors. Jenny’s farm soothes. Typhoons traumatise. Kittens console. This is the 19th time I have summarised my year in exactly 25 words. Here are all the 25 Word entries...
by kuri | Dec 31, 2019 | Japan, Personal Reflections
December 31, 2019. Beautiful blue skies and a high of 21C. The ideal day to go on a little adventure. Futtsu Misaki is a needle of land reaching into Tokyo Bay. It’s captivated Tod since we lived in Tokyo; he even figured out to to travel here without a car but...
by kuri | Dec 27, 2019 | Cats
A man and his cats. It’s not very cold, but the cats are wigged out about the appearance of Background Cat and Foreground Cat. Background Cat (aka BG cat for her “black and gold” fur) turned up a week ago and has been coming around looking for food....
by kuri | Dec 21, 2019 | Japan, Personal Reflections
Kamogawa has a magic club made up of grandparents. Today was their annual Christmas show – free charming entertainment for families and us. One by one, the magicians took the stage for a ten minute set. Dressed in their most magical costumes, they made scarves...
by kuri | Dec 20, 2019 | Personal Reflections, Wonderful Words
It’s theme word time. This year, I feel like December has snuck up on me. We’re halfway through and I am not prepared to end my year with any forward looking anything. I can barely register what’s on today’s To Do list. Despite that, this...
by kuri | Dec 16, 2019 | Cats, Personal Reflections
We walked to Mika for dinner tonight. It’s the closest restaurant to our house, about a kilometer away, 11 minutes on foot. It is also 11 minutes on four feet, if you are the cats who came along with us. They trotted through the back roads all the way there. I...
by kuri | Dec 16, 2019 | Household, Japan, Personal Reflections
Today our neighborhood policeman received a potted plant as an annual recognition for work well done in patrolling our neighborhood. We happened to be in the village and I asked to capture the moment. Everyone lined up for a photo, some a little confused at what this...
by kuri | Dec 13, 2019 | Food, Household
Oranges ripening along the road near home. Not quite ready to pick yet. We can wait, because the other day we received this: A 10 kg gift of fancy mikan from Kagawa, in the citrus growing regions southwest of here. These are perfectly in season, delicious and...
by kuri | Dec 6, 2019 | Cats, Personal Reflections
They may look like shelves in the laundry area, but these are cat stairs from the roof. Tod rewired the outside light to fix the dangling mess of electrical cables the cats had torn from the wall as they would half-slide, half leap from the roof. Then we put up...
