We drove back from the marvellous, chirpy Kamo festival full of beans (and mochi and softcream)- a town clearly proud of its beautiful camphor tree with the shrine next door. The heartwarming innocence of a little girl fresh from her ichi-san-go aged 3 blessing, in the cutest pinky-red kimono you've ever seen- little streaks of salmon pink under ( Read more... )

Gosh, how things rise and sink on a constant journey of loops, reversals and progressions. I went from lethargic and depressed the week after my birthday to ecstatic and bouncy during the 3 days of unbroken sunshine last week, to a confused and disappointed, yet somehow more informed self this week. I've had another car crash (reversing into ( Read more... )

Days like this are what make life in Japan beautiful, literally and figuratively. A clarity that rarely cleanses this steamy isle, real blue in the sky, birds singing and the sound of obachans making merry as they work together in each others' gardens. Persimmons, small citrus, lots of greens, pretty moths, wilting cosmos and spider corpses ( Read more... )

I love this quote from Kesey as they set out on the 'happening' bus.

"All of us are beginning to do our thing, and we're going to keep doing it, right out front, and none of us are going to deny what other people are doing." "bullshit" says Jane Burton. This brings Kesey up short for a moment, but he just rolls with it. "Thats Jane," he says. " And ( Read more... )

Damnation. The 'restore from drafts' i.e. copy and paste for lazy lazy people function seems to have got the grumps with constant demands upon its laxity to procrastinators. Thus I have lost the twaddle I scribbled the other night. Can't even remember what it was like, but I suspect it was a recount of my relatively dismal birthday, eventually ( Read more... )

Almost a month since I left for the UK (calling things 'home' induces unsurety) in a flurry of typhoon panic and I'm reaching the light at the end of a brief tunnel of unexpected homesickness. It really was the perfect trip home but I landed in Japan with a confused sense of 'what am I doing here when I have such an incredible bunch of folks ( Read more... )

Britain has been delightful, and even the nasty bits have engendered affectionate feelings of nostalgic irony. Except people talking on mobile phones on trains- it's as though they're deliberately saying things for the informative benefit of the strangers around them, like walking 'I'm great' adverts. No you're not- you keep stumbling over your ( Read more... )

Everyone is outside doing sports practice and I feel rather un…sportsmanly to be here in the staffroom tucked in the computer cabinets. Or rather than sports practice, practice for sports day. They are two different things, the undokai or sports festival being a matter for strict choreography and rehearsal. Perfect rajio-taiso-style limber-ups, ( Read more... )

I am utterly bedulled by wading through the kanji character list I have to learn for the JLPT Level 3 test in December. I am really only at Level 4- level 3 is meant for those with 300 hours of study and 300 kanji, with a total of 1,500 word vocab (kanji readings and meanings) when compounds and non-kanji words are included. The grammar is ( Read more... )

Horribly hungover and torn between Alex Kerr’s rather depressing book about Japan’s destructive environmental (non) policies or flexing my flawed capacity for recall in order not to fall asleep and wake up with an imprint of said depressing book’s spine on my flushed cheek (I think I’m still drunk). Last night was a session of takoyaki, salsa ( Read more... )