Only a Blockhead

Diary

For most of the week, temperatures have been in double figures at dawn, and above 20C at noon. As we head into May, the forecast promises to cement that trend.

Yesterday our neighbor O-san’s daughter brought five of their goats to graze the orchard. Tied to the plum trees, they cropped the grass close, but didn’t touch the purple mustard flowers.

Azaleas brighten the roadsides with splashes of red and pink. Purple wisteria hangs heavy: approach at your own risk.

    Pausing to enjoy wisteria’s heady scent,

    I’m buzzed by bumblebees.

--Julian

In Sangenjaya

—David

Country diary

Bamboo shoots began to pop up on the fringes of the grove this morning, two weeks later than usual. J and R came to dig them, for themselves and for their parents. The parents are in their 80s, and their pleasure in life, by all accounts, is enjoying the progress of the year through its seasonal foods. Bamboo shoots, almost as ephemeral as the recent cherry blossom, are a major (and delicious) mid-April marker.

The next-door neighbors brought purple radish, which Y sliced raw with an olive oil and lemon peel dressing.

I was out raking the catkins off the hillside road as evening fell. Dumping them took me to the upper allotments.

    Smoke from a farmer’s fire dissolves into the bamboo grove

    Crows fly to roost

--Julian

Tighten it Up

 

—David

Petals

The cherry blossoms are now bowing out in a flurry of petals. A breath of breeze and single petals spiral down; a gust of wind and hundreds fill the air before blanketing the water, or chasing furiously, then eddying in pools on the ground.

I spent most of the week on my bicycle, following the flowers to local viewing spots where massed clouds of pink draw us from far and wide. There were also the back alleys where coming upon a single tree in splendid bloom was as moving as the dozens in a park or along a riverbank.

Meoto Ike Koen Park is a small oasis in a quiet neighborhood below Kamakurayama. The two cherry trees that stretch over the water, all the more magnificent for their understatement, ended their brief days of spring glory this weekend.

 

    In Meoto Ike Park, pink blizzard; azure flash

    Beneath the swirling petals a kingfisher works the water

 

--Julian

beer and blossom

The cherry blossoms are here for their all-too-brief few days of glory. Anticipation was building. It’s an event important enough to be celebrated on seasonal beer cans.

The art captures both the clouds of pink from a distance, and the close-up flowers you see when you sit or stroll under them. Note that some of the petals have already fluttered to the ground, or rather water (the regular can for this beverage is blue, and the pink is subtly reflected in it). The plane is probably to contextualize the upper area of blue as sky. It is also a metaphor for the soaring of spirits upon seeing the blossom through beer goggles alcohol-induced well-being.

The astute imbibers among you have already noted that this can isn’t what is usually termed beer: it’s “happoshu,” which has the same alcohol content as beer but skimps on the malt to get a cheaper tax rate, yet is cunningly brewed to taste more or less like the real thing. It’s a crucial part of my evening, not so much for its price, although that’s nice, but as a flavor base-line that primes me to notice the extraordinary deliciousness of the Yona Yona beer I drink next, and not take it for granted.

It doesn’t end there. Later in the evening, my palate is ready for a flavor as explosive as the fireworks on the label. For hop lovers, it gets no better than Baird’s locally brewed Suruga Bay. During this week of blossoms, and for the rest of the year no less.

--Julian

Kinmugi happoshu (Suntory) ¥125

Yona Yona Pale Ale (Yo-Ho Brewing, Nagano) ¥250

Suruga Bay Imperial IPA (Baird Brewing, Shizuoka) ¥500

cherry blossom / rain

Rain darkens, sharpens the clouds of pink blossom

And instead puts pillows of pure white around Oyama’s peak

 

--Julian

A whiter shade of pale

The pale pink somei yoshino cherry blossoms in the Shonan area will be at their best this coming weekend, unfortunately coinciding with a forecast of rain.

I rode around yesterday, beginning at Chigasaki Southern Beach. The Eboshi Iwa rock, symbol of our town, is the blip on the horizon. That’s a road atlas tucked in my pannier.

From Route 134, Fuji was a ghost in the haze above the Shonandaira Highland.

Turtles basked in the Kanamegawa River near Hiratsuka.

In the afternoon, I found a few trees coming into bloom under the monorail beyond Fujisawa.

And up an alleyway at the foot of Kamakurayama, one tree of another cherry species in full flower; a whiter shade of pale.

--Julian

Heard and seen on a recent cycle ride

A flute playing traditional music under a highway bridge

A woman picking edible wild plants by the roadside

A monk in robes and a conical hat, chanting outside someone’s front door.

A man wearing gaudy samurai armor, and another wearing just the shoulder pads, walking past a convenience store.

An out-of-the-way shrine with an unusual rope decoration: what does it represent? Answer at the end of this post.

Bush warblers calling to each other deep in a bamboo thicket.

Everywhere magnolia trees with raggedy snow-white flowers, petals akimbo; cherry trees with swollen buds about to open.

A man with a camera and a huge lens, taking pictures of birds down on the concrete river bed.

And on the way home, shakuhachi music where the flute had been before.

--Julian

Photo: The rope decoration at Hakusan Shrine in Imaizumi, Ofuna represents the shrine’s guardian deity: a giant centipede.