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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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Rain, Observed
I took a moment today to sit on the floor in the dining room and look out the window at the rain. It was meditative to observe without any expectation or need to act. I watched the water drip off the channels of our tin roof. Each had a different timing, creating a pattern that…
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Tanada Go-nin Otoko
Kabuki debut! It’s been years since I’ve been on a stage for any sort of performance and this one was special – a Kabuki skit in Japanese, and I was in drag. Since I was in makeup at 9:30 and in costume from 11 am for our 2 pm performance, I made sure to add…
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Early Morning
My favorite days start with a dawn walk around 555. I join the bees and butterflies in their first explorations. Birds sing and squawk. The morning unfolds itself with a sensory overload. Today, the scent in the mist was heavenly. The huge osmanthus along our driveway is starting to bloom. Its tiny orange flowers are…
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Yumbo!
One of my goals for 2024 is to get my excavator certification. It’s not a typical goal for a middle-aged lady, but read on for the why. Thanks to a lucky chain of events, I am helping to organise an English-friendly certification course in Kamogawa in November. We are currently hustling to get enough students…
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Moon Madness
Might as well blame the minor incidents of the last couple of days on something. It was the FULL MOON that gave me a migraine, caused me to search the house for a missing spoon at 2 am, and made Beryl play with a snake. There’s not much else to say about the “Respect for…
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Camera Roll
What have I been taking photos of this month? Most of them ended up in blog posts, but here are a few smaller moments that didn’t get their own write up. Things I made: Skies: Cats: If you want my ephemeral photos in realtime, my Instagram stories feature shots like these.
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1 year at 555
Today’s the anniversary of our move into the new house. It’s been a great 12 months and I wanted to mark it with a visual celebration. But instead, I have been distracted by cleaning and maintaining all of the things I ignored for a year. Lest you think I slacked for an entire year, here…
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