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Mike,
Today I made a great discovery – the observatory has guest bikes for anyone to take out. So tomorrow (Sunday) I’m going to ride to the history museum in Nobeyama, and see the sights of the nearby tourist towns. I walked about 5 or 6 km today, mostly on bike trails, and watched the winds whip up soil from the plowed fields nearby. The locals ought to leave the stubble like most American farmers seem to since the great Dust Bowl of the 30’s. But here we are in a deep valley hemmed in by mountains – unlike the Great Plains – so the soil probably just gets blown from farm to farm instead of into the Atlantic.
There were also quite a few dust devils over the farms. I haven’t seen any of those before except in western deserts. I didn’t get a picture of one today, because I was on a quest for camera batteries, but now, thanks to the Nobeyama Co-op store (Domo arigato gosiemas) my camera is re-empowered. Maybe tomorrow I can get a dust-devil photo without being swept up in one like Dorothy.
Shamaru/rakkity
michael
Wellllllll, Peter, are you to busy to add your two cents worth?
adam
Okay, we’d settle for a snow devil if dust isn’t available …
peter miller
It’s all pretty home-sickening. Snow got reinvented all over again when I was in Kyoto, but so did the cold for that matter. I suppose Ed, that you are getting the benefits of institutional life with insitutionalized heat. In those cozy homes there’ll probably be a “kotatsu” which is a table with 15inch legs and a blanket that covers the sides and a lightbulb for heat. But if you’re lucky, the house might have a hole in the floor where you can dangle your legs and feel the heat from a charcoal brazier. When I went to bed at the kiln where I worked in Kyushu, they would put a hot coal into an insulated container for my futon, to create a little warm oasis wherever I wanted it.
Snow on the rooftops, on the tombstones, on the temple walls, on the plum and cherry trees, on the cedars, the pines, and the Japanese maples, all variety of shapes to capture the snow and be reshaped by it, as I was, mesmerized by the visual magic of a world that would blow my mind with every season.
When I left I put my stuff in a friend’s attic and said I’d be back in a year to pick it up. That one year has been a long one.
Ed, I think you should double check on the in/out kanji, I think you may have reversed the meanings.
Cornflakes with a Japanese breakfast? NOW there’s a concept. Right up there with beer, beef, and ice cream–all at the same time? It sure looks that way.
How about the Japanese names for the constellations?
–my 2 senses–taste & sight