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Blue skies, plum blossoms
The classic February weather that makes everyone feel hopeful. I was very happy to enjoy this day after several grey and rainy ones.
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Drawing weeds
Taking advantage of the lovely weather and a break in my workday, I went outside to sketch. My helpers came with me. She wasn’t wrong. I need to work on my drawing skills.
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Happy 2020
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 intact.
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25 Words
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 I’ve written since 2001: 2018 A contented year at…
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Futsu cape and the Kanon
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 we never made that…
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Kamogawa Magic Club Show
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 appear (sometimes unintentionally), foam balls multiply, knots come undone magically,…
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Flourish 2020
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 tradition needs to continue. So for the past week, I’ve…
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Dinner with cats
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 kept expecting them to…
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Kozuka’s finest
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 foreign woman was doing. After I snapped this…
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Cat stairs
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 shelves strategically to give the…
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