Eager Trees and Turtles

Spring isn't quite in full bloom here in Kashihara, Japan, but some of the trees have jumped the gun. Also, the annual Turtlepocalypse is here.

The really big birds are back, too. Here one soars over a freshly tilled rice field with Mount Unebi in the distance:

And now a conundrum:

The soccer ball, the orange, or the heron? You must choose.

Someone bade goodbye to winter by tying their scarf to a tree:

Finally, here's some Hiroshima style okanomiyaki I had for lunch a couple weeks ago with my friend, Rizu. Mine was squid, hers was pork.

The whole shiny black surface is a stovetop and the okanomiyaki cooks as long as you want it to.

Paint and Animals

Yesterday I went to Osaka and visited Tennoji Zoo and the nearby Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts. The latter was by far the most impressive because it housed an exhibition of 500 years of Western art on loan from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. I went with my neighbour, Tiffany, and her boss, Nakai-sensei.

That's "The Three Ages of Humans" by Dosso Dossi from 1515. But the exhibition had bigger names including Titian, Raphael, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas, Van Gogh, and Monet. Everything looked amazing, every painting's colours harmonising and showing layers in ways that no photograph seems able to capture. I think my favourite of the day was Renoir's "A Young Girl with Daisies".

The colours behind her are more powerful and subtler in person. And her breasts are nice, too, you know.

The zoo couldn't compare to the San Diego Zoo, of course, but I did see some impressive animals. There were lovely bats:

I was surprised to see some Chinese grey wolves:

A couple of them were pacing rapidly and seemed to have a lot of anxiety.

We also saw a lot of big cats.

The lion was being very vocal.

We had a good lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant. All in all, a nice day in Osaka.

Japan Continued

My little winter vacation is coming to an end and I'm feeling especially lazy to-day. So here are some pictures that have accumulated on my camera over the past week.

I did go back to Kashiharajingu and was it ever packed.

Covid numbers have been very low in Japan lately and I guess everyone was itching to get back to the normal New Year's temple visit.

Aside from the temple that day, I haven't been getting out much for this vacation. I worked on my comic, though not as much as I'd have liked because I didn't have tracing paper. I'd taken my pad of tracing paper to work a few weeks ago and it rained when I walked home. The whole pad of paper got warped. So on Monday I journeyed to the one place I around here I knew of where I could get some more, a shop called Stationery Club, five train stations north of me and a bit of a walk. As I was leaving the train station, I ran into some second year students from the school where I'm currently working (so they're around 14 years old). Two boys and one girl. They were all eating karaage, Japanese style fried chicken, and walking to Twin Gate. Looks like the Japanese taboo against walking and eating at the same time is dying. They told me they were going bowling. Twin Gate has bowling, darts, video games, slot machines, a movie theatre, a comics shop, and I think pachinko. I was advised never to go into pachinko parlours so I can look like an upstanding citizen. I hate gambling anyway so that's one piece of advice I don't mind following.

Stationery Club was closed so I dropped by Twin Gate on the walk back to have a look around. I ran into a group of high school boys who'd graduated from one of the junior high schools I'd worked at last year. I remember them as a mischievous bunch and I was happy to see them there, hanging out in front of the ice cream shop, posturing like gangsters. The ice cream shop was closed, too, and one of the guys informed me that it was closed until January 4th. Not everything was closed, though. I had a look around the arcade which was equally divided between video games and gambling machines. I didn't see pachinko in there so hopefully my reputation won't suffer. I certainly didn't play anything. I wouldn't have unless I saw a little Black Lodge floating above a machine.

In a lot near the Twin Gate there are these statues I first noticed some time ago:

I walked onto the lot and found this strange but sort of inconspicuous storefront near the back:

Inside was anything but inconspicuous. A used goods shop, it was filled with books, clothes, video games, jewellery, CDs, movies, gaming systems, swords, and guns. Lots of guns. Various handguns and rifles. Japanese gun laws are pretty strict yet here was this arsenal a few feet away from stacks of video games. Gun crime in Japan isn't close to what it is in the U.S., though, so they must be doing something right.

The place also had David Bowie's Outside album in a special two disk version for only 750 yen (around $7.50). I might go back for that.

Photographing Again

Here's my Christmas tree this year, the picture coming courtesy of my new camera my mother kindly sent me money to buy. It's exactly like my old camera, a Canon Power Shot SX600 HS, I found it on Japanese Amazon for about 7,000 yen, just under 70 dollars.

New camera, same old memory card so I have some photos on it from my old camera with the focus problem.

I went hiking a few weeks ago in the Soni mountains.

The old thing could almost focus if stuff was really far away.

Someone else's camera took this picture:

That's me with some friends; Shuichi, Kumi, and Rizu.

It's too bad all the autumn leaves seem to be gone now. Maybe I can get some good photos of Christmas decorations.

Twitter Sonnet #1503

A jolly suit creates a Santa shape.
Accosting necks, the candy cane deployed.
The flying deer descend before the ape.
A thousand lights were swiftly now employed.
The beaky bone distorts the nose's thought.
A bridge across a skull improves the peace.
The curling beard contained a cookie dot.
To moult alone the duck would hide the geese.
The party choice was elven worker teams.
The stripey hand was one of two to tick.
We sewed the thing that seemed to carry seams.
With dusty red we built a better brick.
Again, the misty green absorbs the air.
Again, a pair of pumps ascend the stair.

Trees and Mountains

I've been seeing cherry blossoms everywhere lately so I thought yesterday would be a good time to go back to Mount Yoshino. A lot of people had the same idea, I guess, because the train was packed, even though it was a Monday.

It was definitely a different experience to when I went last month. According to Wikipedia, there are more than 30,000 cherry trees in the area.

I went up the hillside path that ended in a bridge.

This was part of a street for tourists, filled with shops and restaurants.

Despite all the people, and the fact that it was around noon, the restaurants weren't very crowded. So I stopped in an udon shop and ordered the "Sakura Somen Set".

I should've taken a picture when it was all neatly together but I was so hungry I'd already dug in before it'd occurred to me to take a photo. Somen is very thin noodles served cold. Normally they're white but these had a very light pink colour, apparently flavoured with cherries or petals. They were pretty good, anyway. The yellow strips are egg and it also had green beans and mushrooms. The dark liquid in the cup is tsuyu, a dipping sauce served with somen or soba. Wrapped in the leaves are three pieces of sushi (salmon, tuna, and mackerel) and the cube is a kind of jelly dessert called anmitsu. It was a great lunch.

There are a number of temples and shrines on Mount Yoshino. The biggest is the Shugendo temple Kimpusen-ji.

And it's old.

Sure, it was rebuilt in 1592, making it a mere 429 years old. But parts of it are much older so that's still pretty good, right?

Seriously, though, I'm used to San Diego where something's ancient if it's 150 years old. So many of the structures around here astound me.

The nearby Buddhist temple had some particularly beautiful cherry blossoms.

Some of their branches were supported by thin bamboo poles.

I walked down a path that wound behind the Buddhist temple.

It turned into a steep stone stair I saw few extremely tired tourists coming to the top of. There were no crowds in this area.

This was only one bend of the stair. It's broken up periodically for small shrines.

I've noticed there are often small pieces of clothing on the statues.

These little foxes were up near the main temple.

I finally came to the bottom of the stairs.

I felt like I'd cheated, coming down the back. It seemed like a test of endurance for the few people I saw coming up the stairs.

I thought about going back up but I found an intriguing forest path and started walking. Very soon I was totally alone. It was very peaceful. I see now the road isn't even on Google maps.

I walked about ten minutes before the path came to this little area, which is where Google maps picks back up.

I still didn't see any people about until I spotted one guy on a motorcycle driving away.

I continued down the road figuring it would end up in civilisation again eventually. I saw lots and lots of trees.

Signs started warning me about falling trees and rocks.

It certainly looked like a tree falling was not an uncommon occurrence.

When I finally did start seeing buildings, it wasn't long before, unsurprisingly, I saw signs of lumber industry.

There were plenty of little homesteads, too. I felt a little like I'd found Japan's Twin Peaks.

Especially when I saw this table:

I finally ended up at Yoshino River.

I walked from there to Muda Station, skipping three train stations for my route home. According to Google, I walked around 4.6 kilometres, or around 2.8 miles. That's not counting my walk around Mount Yoshino itself. So I guess that was enough exercise for one day.

Twitter Sonnet #1437

Assorted snacks redeem the basket take.
We checked the box and cooked the curry right,
With flour, eggs, and salt, we often bake.
While sugar bides beyond the deadly night.
Computer shoes designed to run were slow.
The wire laces caught the edge of green.
Instruct the galley RAM to swiftly row.
There's something tiny stuck upon the screen.
A giant bed absorbed the extra room.
A growing face denied the novel prize.
Forgotten tabs would cause the cam to zoom.
The viewing distance changed instead of size.
The cherry mountains watched another fish.
The darker trees prepare a cooler dish.