Beautiful Soup

Last week, I joined the third year students on a field trip to Mie, a coastal town about three hours away by bus. Students waded in the shallow water near shore collecting clams which were later cooked into a miso soup for lunch.

It was good. A bit salty.

I mostly just took pictures.

There'd been a rain storm the previous day so of course many things had washed ashore. As always, there were many abandoned gloves.

But the most interesting thing I found was this little ray:

It had a big hole in its ventral side.

I carried it around to show students.

One student who didn't want to hunt clams just made this sand castle.

She'd brought that nice straw hat but it was too windy for her to wear it.

We went back to Kashihara early because it started to rain. This was one of the many nice rest stops on the way:

Twitter Sonnet #1586

The spinning magnet wrote a caption fast.
The bullet point was spared a second draft.
To us, the future seemed a distant past.
The captain's compass changed from fore to aft.
Corrected bottles carried notes across.
The cord was kinked to hold an errant breath.
Disruptive winds prevent the quarter toss.
Our choices shift a magnet's life or death.
The swirling net was lost beneath the math.
Again the rain has choked the earnest word.
We tell ourselves the day's a cheaper bath.
Across the Earth, we see the warning bird.
The cloudy beach was rife with packaged food.
We found a little meat to suit the mood.