Only a Blockhead

Sky beans

(It’s 2014, and I’m reading Love, Nina.) 

When I cycle to a nearby town, I pass vegetable fields near the river. Today, a farmer was selling “sora mame” broad beans freshly picked from his field: small baskets of around 20 pods for just 250 yen (£1.50; $2.50). I stopped and bought a basket, and we podded them together.

Farmer: What are “sora mame” in English?

Me: Broad beans. I suppose because they are broader than other beans.  Why are they called “sora mame” (sky beans) in Japanese?

F: Hmm. The pods point upwards to the sky until gravity pulls them down. How do you eat them in your country?

M: Boiled as a vegetable, with meat and potatoes.

F: (mild surprise)

M: But here I eat them like you, as a snack with beer.

I boiled them tonight with a little salt and they were tender and delicious. Y (boyfriend) tasted one and suggested they’d be even better if we added olive oil.

We did and they were.

 

--Julian

This is the final archival post in the series I've been posting for the last 12 months to celebrate Only A Blockhead's 10th anniversary. 

 

Frogs

The frogs in the flooded paddy fields fill the night with stupendous chorus. It’s a heart-stopping sound. Year after year, I try to evoke it in words. Some attempts over the decade:

        After sunset

        The symphony of frogs

        Soothing in the distance, cacophony close by

 

        At dusk

        bats zip soundless through the dark sky

        and frogs drown out the traffic

 

        A clear night

        The rice paddies flooded

        Frogs croak in deafening chorus

 

        The rainy season:

        Night time paddy fields

        a pulsing concert of frogs

 

--Julian

Rain

It’s been raining for two days straight, with varying intensity. There’s no need to look out of the window to see how hard it’s falling. When it starts to bucket, the frogs--many of them high in the trees--greet the downpour with a sudden frenzy of croaking.  

Then the rain stopped and we could go out into the world again.

 

        On the bank of a roaring river

        A man plucks a shamisen;

        A white heron flies upstream

 

--Julian

Neighbors

This morning a pheasant hidden in the tall weeds of the next-door orchard gave a throaty call and flapped its wings, doing this every few minutes in answer to another in the trees across the valley.

On the way home, I saw a brown cat walking down a row of onions in a farmer's field. When it heard me, it stopped and looked my way... and I saw it was a wild tanuki (raccoon dog). It turned and ran – fast – into the nearby woods.

(Photo by Iwanafish via Wikimedia Commons)

        Sawing wood out back

        I find

        a very handsome caterpillar

 

--Julian

After the typhoon

From 2008

I splashed to work on a wet midweek morning in the aftermath of an unseasonably early typhoon. The day before it had set the treetops swaying, but now all was still as the rain poured down. On the narrow road through the fields, it was clear the weather wasn't dissuading the residents who have been calling to each other for weeks now.

 

        A rainy morning

        From the shelter of spring leaves

        The bush warblers’ song

 

In the early afternoon the rain stopped. Later the white orb of the sun was visible, as pale as the moon as it neared the horizon. After dark the moon itself, halfway to full, was high in a clearing sky.

Grass, weeds, vegetables and flowers have marked time on these rainy days. The earth is holding the water. Add sun to the equation for explosive growth.

--Julian

Visitor

Black flapping

Profligate splashing

Crow bathing in neighbor’s water basin

 

--Julian

A sound of summer

Woken at 4AM

by a high whine:

First mosquito of the year

 

--Julian

May

Here in central Japan, May is when farmers flood the paddy fields. There’s abundant sunshine and rain, and sometimes typhoons. Plants and animals, birds and insects flourish. There is a great deal to see and hear. This is from 2008.  

On the way to work

The sun already up and warm by 6:00

On the roadsides, poppies, daisies, the last of the azaleas

In the fields, rotting lettuces and insect-shredded cabbages

Rows of newly-planted tomatoes, eggplants

The sudden sweetness of honeysuckle

From deep in a thicket, the bush warbler's song

 

On the way home

The moon, full and clear

Gnats, bats

The pulsing croak of frogs

The keening buzz of a solitary insect

Lights in the windows, and

the smell of an evening meal

 

--Julian

Sounds and silence

This morning I came upon this quotation from The Name of the Wind, a fantasy novel by Patrick Rothfuss.

It is quiet, and when the belling tower strikes the late hour, it doesn't break the silence so much as it underpins it. The crickets, too, respect the silence. Their calls are like careful stitches in its fabric, almost too small to be seen.

Ah, yes! My day is bracketed by just these sounds. Every morning, I wake to the local temple bell. And crickets are the white sound of a summer's night.

What pleasure when notes and chords, a dab of paint or a turn of phrase mirror your experience, and all you can say is, “Yes, that’s exactly how it is.”

        A cricket’s buzz!

        Outlier, presager,

        Harbinger of sultry summer

--Julian

The scent of fuji

From 2009

The other day I stopped at the rice cracker store in Kagawa hamlet and saw the potted “fuji” (wisteria) outside was in bloom. Fuji shares a name with, and is the designated flower of, Fujisawa, the neighboring town. It grows domestically and also wild, climbing high over bushes and trees and bringing splashes of purple to the countryside. If I have to choose--well, then, I'll say it's my favorite flower.

Yesterday we passed another large and spectacular potted fuji in a backstreet gateway. Its owner happened to be in the yard and kindly allowed us to take photographs. The vine is very old, she said. It used to be covered in flowers but has far fewer now. And she showed us how one of the branches had grown through the wall of its own accord to spread and bloom in the garden behind.

She also told us it had a scent, and sure enough it did--slightly sweet, not unpleasant. I never knew wisteria had a scent before. I just got to know my favorite flower better.

--Julian