Summer Onions

Yesterday I saw some turtles had scored themselves a lifetime supply of onions.

I'm really sick of the summer heat this year. It's making me sluggish and unmotivated. I went to the mall yesterday to enjoy free air conditioning with everyone. I read Thomas Carlyle at Starbucks for a while. I had a nice big tuna rice bowl, magurodonburi, for lunch because it was fairly cool. It also turned out to be delicious.

Here's a spider I saw yesterday. I hope she's writing, "Autumn is coming".

X Sonnet #1730

A flower dream was small and known to bloom.
But later years revoked a thought for dreams.
Reversed, we woke the end and slept the doom.
So where's the sense to sew the sloppy seams?
It starts at See's with suckers sold for cash.
A broken pumpkin butterscotch contends.
The featherweight's above the grave with trash.
Of hasty kills a foolish plot portends.
A glowing salad praised the fire dressing.
Triangle bread could change the stomach mind.
But hearts were sugar notes of candy blessing.
At least, that's what the power people find.
The mound of oats arose to greet the day.
We trust the sun of yarns will find a way.

Spider Sports

This big lovely lady and her progeny have had their massive webs spread over my balcony for about a month now. And you can see they barred plenty of bugs from entry into my apartment. Looks like they even stopped a wasp.

Here they are in the morning sunshine.

The spider population has appropriately increased with the onset of autumn. If only the days were getting cooler. I took part in the sports festival for the first year students on Thursday and the poor kids had to play for four hours in direct sunlight. It got up to 32 Celsius. But they were genki, giving it their all in tugs of war, relay races, and tamaire.

I'm discovering Azumanga Daioh is pretty true to life. I can't find subtitled versions of episodes on YouTube but I tried YouTube's auto-translate in the settings to-day for the first time. It's about as hilariously useless as you might expect:

"It's been unbelievable since I put it in Bulma after gymnastics", "Rar car ah", "It's okay to invert it, so it's okay, so it's okay", and "Pyaa I love you and do my best It's a," are some of the handy phrases YouTube renders from the Japanese.

Twitter Sonnet #1480

With random milk, create the double cheese.
Dismantled sweets disperse as cubic grains.
The random dots combine to seem as bees.
The squinting man adjusts his tightened Hanes.
Gorilla bathes would slosh the wine abroad.
Another tea could tip the raft to Hell.
A modern phone was all electric sod.
A message moves by cord and paper bell.
Some leaves of green would buy a better end.
Escape was planned behind the metal fence.
The colour stripes desist around the bend.
The frank transmission bleeds too much to mince.
A friendly silk condemns the busy specks.
A spider hand's produced from waxy decks.

Scattered Webs of the Evening

The spiders are coming out in force. Three days into September and the cicada sounds have been replaced by cricket sounds to-night and it's remarkable how much it's starting to feel like autumn already. Last night I saw two frogs hopping down the stairs into a train station but I couldn't get a good picture. I hope they caught their train.

There's still cicada body parts everywhere. A cicada was a rare sight in San Diego. I'm getting used to the little nutcases here in Japan. I say little but they're like small birds zooming around, crashing into everything. On the stairwell outside my apartment the steps are littered with wings and abdomens and legs. I'd be surprise to see an intact corpse at this point.

Yesterday I started back working at the junior high school. I'm so happy to be back, though actually I'd been going there throughout the summer to help supervise the art club. These kids never get tired. They're in there, drawing and colouring, with pencils, paints, and inks while the brass band endlessly practices outside, the soccer team does muscle training, the kyudo team gracefully hit their marks, and the judo club throw down one another. This is Sparta.

In the art club to-day, a student and I were goofing around, trying to make another student break her poker face. I succeeded by singing "Mairzy Doats". I guess that's teaching English.

Out for Food

I finally saw a pair of shoes when I went out for groceries. This little pair of kids shoes was neatly placed by the roadside.

I also finally got some decent pictures of the wild koi I've been seeing in the canals and rivers that are everywhere.

This was a group hanging out around a drainage pipe. I guess the weird currents must be exciting.

I also saw my first Japanese spider.

Nothing too exciting. Maybe next time I'll see a big black one with AKUMA written in red kanji on the abdomen.

Among other things, I was picking up coffee at the grocery store. I've been getting Doutor coffee, a brand I'm really starting to like. Their shops are better equipped for laptops here and their store bought coffee has a handy little bonus feature.

It comes in what look like little tea bags with strange bits of cardboard on the side. You rip off the top and fold out the cardboard on your cup like so:

It's not just coffee grounds, it's a coffee filter and rudimentary coffee maker. You boil water in a kettle and pour it slowly into the open top.

If I'd known about this, I'd have held off buying a coffee pot. The best part is that it allows you to steep the coffee, like a French press, so you can make strong coffee with the small bit of grounds in the bag. It's really good.

Weaving a Web Without Connecting Strands

I love Doctor Who and I love spiders so I should've enjoyed to-day's new episode, "Arachnids in the UK", a lot more. I do like the title, I guess a play on "Anarchy in the UK". It could've used some anarchy, at least a little loosening up of what felt like another stiff plot forced onto the narrow track of messaging. But I did feel like the characters were allowed to breathe a little more.

Spoilers after the screenshot

I found myself liking Yasmin (Mandip Gill) a little more in this episode and I like the idea of meeting her family. But the old shtick of a family who are so comfortable with one another they say hilariously insulting things to each other in front of strangers fell a little flat. It would've been better if there were no attempt to make them funny, maybe just have them talk over tea.

I've never been fond of the device where a dead loved one appears as a manifestation of a character's thoughts about them but in between those moments Graham's (Bradley Walsh) grief was kind of effective. I felt like Chibnall was trying to channel what made the first episodes of Broadchurch so effective. Though maybe we have Twin Peaks, as the prototype for Broadchurch, to thank more than Chibnall.

It's weird how much more effective the Doctor's anti-gun stance was before it became a seemingly mandatory message. This episode seemed in particularly bad taste in light of yesterday's synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. We're introduced to a thin Donald Trump parody named Robertson (Chris Noth) whose insistence that they shoot the spiders that've been attacking and killing people is presented as cartoonish, derided out of hand by the Doctor and her companions, who favour a vague plan involving luring the spiders with music. A giant mother spider is suffocating--when this revelation comes, the soundtrack actually gives us violins. That's only been a cliché for two, maybe three hundred years. But I did feel bad for the creature. When Robertson shot it, we were clearly meant to think he was a psycho, but as far as I can see he was right, it was a mercy killing.

Mind you, I'm speaking as a vegetarian. I'm all for sparing animal lives whenever possible but giant spiders that are hunting humans? If you're not going to use guns you need a good reason. Chibnall didn't supply it which ironically gave me the feeling that he doesn't actually understand the gun issue.

I did think Jodie Whittaker was good in the episode. My favourite part was the beginning where she was getting ready to leave, very reluctantly, and immediately jumped at Yasmin's offer of tea.

Twitter Sonnet #1169

The clouds in orbit blot the foundered moon.
At peril's edge a pair of houses drop.
The servant crew's compelled to promptly swoon.
The splintered floor occasioned songs to stop.
Machines surprise the moss from off the stones.
A creaking fate emerges round the wheel.
A cracking step discovers trodden bones.
A quiet host await a final meal.
A silent gust deprived the ground of grass.
A forest never grown obstructs the thought.
Conducting little flames the candles pass.
The cloven hill denies the answer sought.
The busy things've spun a webbing clock.
A swarm of ghosts invest the buried rock.