Only a Blockhead

August 26

Ode to Gold’nBub

 

A summer evening

sitting at the outside table

in good company

with beer cold and hoppy

brewed on site

is pleasure

profound

Cherry blossom

Continuing our series of past posts to mark 10 years of this blog. The cherry blossom arrived early and is over for this year. This post from 2008 celebrates the annual ritual.

Cherry blossoms and spring sunshine combine to create one of the great joys of Japan. They co-occur for a couple of weekends at most, and the pleasure is only heightened by the brevity.  

As winter ends, the blossom front sweeps up from the south. Here in Kanto, early varieties of cherry bloom here and there in mid-March prefigure the eagerly-awaited flood of pale pink at the end of the month. There are cherry trees lining roads and river banks, surrounding schools, clumped in parks, in temple precincts and gardens, on hillsides. Toward month-end, the first flowers open, and within a week, they have enveloped the trees in shimmering clouds. So prevalent is cherry that traveling by train you cannot look out of the window without seeing startling oases or oceans of pink.

In blossom week, Tokyo parks seethe with revelers, but here in the country you can enjoy a picnic in quieter surroundings. After deciding which tree or trees to sit beneath, assemble a ground sheet and some cushions. Cake shops and the basement of department stores offer a variety of sublime pink rice and bean confections decorated with flowers. Add to these tea, a can of beer, a glass of wine, a cup of sake, friends and the warmth of the day, and give yourself to the party. The sun shining through the blossom dapples and dazzles. A petal or two floats down. The breeze brings the laughter of another group of celebrants nearby.

Cherry blossoms coincide with the start of the school and fiscal year. It is a time when new recruits join companies, and old recruits are reassigned to new duties. The astonishing, pure, almost otherworldly flowers mark these beginnings. A few days later the flowers begin to fragment until petals blizzard down in earnest, and fresh green leaves push out and dilute the pink of the remaining flowers. The blossoms are a memory, a dream, and they will be back next year.

        Last of the blossom

        But beneath, new beauty

        Petals like drifting snow

--Julian

In February

At a wayside inn on a winter’s eve,

Warm sake and shared memories

 

Exquisite beauty:

A sliver of moon

On a winter night

 

The morning after the blizzard,

White on white:

Plum flowers frosted with snow

The generosity of hot coffee

on a freezing morning:

warming hands, stomach, heart.

 

--Julian

Solstice

Today, as we head toward [see previous post] the temporal "exit" of the year, the solstice coincides with a crescent moon, and the cold has rendered persimmons and maple leaves a memory. Otherwise the post below could stand for this or any year.  

As usual, the end-of-the-year weather is invigorating here in coastal Kanto: Blue sky and warm sun during the day and frost at night. The full moon rose at dusk for the winter solstice, the day when kabocha pumpkin is eaten and yellow yuzu citrus are floated in the bath. But the lunar eclipse the next night was hidden by cloud.

I'm busy writing New Year cards: the deadline for posting them this year is December 25 if they’re to be delivered on New Year’s morning. After that, there’s almost a week left for the massive chore of spring cleaning the house to be ready for the New Year.

Outside, the last persimmons hang orange on bare branches; the last maple leaves cling red to the tree.

--Julian 

Fall

Some past posts to celebrate 10 years of Only A Blockhead; this from late October 2010.

Fall. The harvest is almost in—one farm down the road still has the rice drying on poles in the paddy fields. It’s being soaked with the rain from the passing typhoons, and will dry again with improved flavor.

Fall is above all a comfortable season. That means a great deal because the Japanese summer is so intense with impossibly humid heat – something to stand.

Fall is the blessing of a temperature that suits the body. It’s a season for both sport and exertion, and for relaxation and reading. A season for enjoying a cornucopia of delicious things to eat such as pumpkin – the dense, sweet kind; “sanma” Pacific saury, a fish that’s grilled and then served with grated daikon radish; jade green gingko nuts grilled on the thinnest skewers; mushrooms... (the list goes on).

--Julian

The only constant

I probably should have seen it coming. Two New Years ago, the local cleaning store stopped giving a calendar to its customers. This week it closed its doors, victim of cut-price laundry factories and improved home washing and drying technology. I’d been going there for 30 years.

On the other hand, an independent bakery and patisserie recently opened in one end of what had been a video rental store (victim of the Tsutaya that opened down the hill; the other end is now a medical massage business). La Chenille makes what I can only describe as extreme croissant, baked with such skill that all other croissants, even from reputable chain bakeries, now taste to me like so much dry bread. I treat myself to a couple with coffee on Sunday mornings, and they are something I look forward to all week with an ardor that verges upon embarrassing.

The neighborhood gradually changes. It always has. The passing of the Yoshida’s Cleaning Store, with its efficient, friendly and personal service, brought unexpected tears to my eyes. Just down the road, an enterprising baker brings his art to our lives. Overall, in spite of sadness, I can’t be nostalgic for the good old days.

--Julian

La Chenille is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily except Wednesday. The croissants come out of the oven between 10:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Dream realized

Two summers ago, I visited Baird’s Brewery with friends including fellow-Blockhead David. We left the Tokaido main line at Mishima, and took a local train down into the Izu peninsula, stopping at tiny stations and passing through lush countryside fringed by prominent hills. I thought how much I’d like to cycle in this landscape, and how to do so I’d have to buy a folding bicycle, which I subsequently did.

After adventures elsewhere, this week during the Golden Week holidays, I finally realized the dream that inspired me to buy a Bike Friday. I started riding from Mishima Station and followed rivers and the single-track railway through the glorious countryside with fresh green leaves, sparkling water, paddies being planted, down to Shuzenji Spa to meet the same companions as before, who had been running along the Kano River, for a bath at Hakoyu in a cedar tub.

After a reviving soak, we went the short distance to the brewery. Sitting on the patio, surrounded by spectacular hills and a wide blue sky, we picnicked while imbibing a selection of Baird’s finest creations. The conversations continued as the light faded from the sky and the frogs took up chorus in the newly flooded paddies below. A day, an afternoon, an evening to remember.

        In ancient countryside

        As evening falls, a rice paddy symphony

 

--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

Still Walking in Chigasaki

This post won’t make much sense unless you’ve seen the magnificient movie Aruite mo Aruite mo (Still Walking) enough times to remember the details.

When I got solar panels installed a few years ago, the yard had to be dug up, and a gardener replaced some of the shrubs. One of his additions grew into a gangly tangle of splayed branches. This August, it flowered for the first time: a サルスベリcrepe myrtle!

Also this summer, Blockhead’s favorite Chigasaki izakaya, Inaka, added corn tempura to the menu.

 In Japan, Aruite mo Aruite mo is available to rent at Tsutaya with English subtitles.

 

--Julian

On the first really cold morning

On the first really cold morning of winter

Steam rises from the buttered toast.

--Julian