Index
Spring gets all the glory here in Japan. The plum blossoms start the parade early in the year, then the cherry blossoms turn up and fall apart and everyone natters on for a few weeks about the symbolism and aren't they just so pretty, and then the wisteria starts to bloom and then it's summer, and then...flower after flower, tree after tree, each a more delicate shade of white than the one before. It's all lovely. Just lovely.
But it's get a bit same-y. I mean, seriously, Japan's flowering trees all work with the same palette - white with occasional splashes of pink or purple. Whenever something really interesting shows up, like the blue flowering nemophila1, everyone goes nuts for the two weeks it's around and then it's back to white on green.
And then there's the weather. Look, cherry blossoms are beautiful, but they only come out when it's cold. And the lavender is gorgeous2, but it only shows up in the summer, when it's hot and miserable out.
What I'm trying to say is that there are only two good months to live in Japan3: October and November. Everything is green and yellow, orange and red, the sky is a clear blue, the weather is cool and crisp but not cold and finally, finally, finally, it feels like leaving the house might actually be worth the effort4!
Okay. Alright. Silliness aside, fall is gorgeous here; it feels all the more affecting for me because I grew up in a town where the weather was always the same, only slightly more or less hot depending on the season. When I first moved to a place with actual weather, when I was in college, I spent hours just driving around through the trees and small towns marveling at how many colors there were. That feeling has never quite gone away.
But all that said, it has been a long, slow burn of an autumn. Nothing has been terribly wrong, on a personal level, in fact most of everything is trying hard to return to normal, for whatever that means. And it's a bit disconcerting. As discussed in the previous post, I went to Tokyo for the book festival for the first time in years and it was not all that I had hoped it would be.
Things still felt off, there was a tension in the air, a rising feeling of unease at being around large groups of people, of gathering inside, of pretending like we were as we once had been5. I didn't like it. I returned home early and after reflecting on things for the next several days more or less decided that I wasn't ready to get out into the world yet. Not that like anyway. So, I returned to walking the narrow roads between the rice fields behind my house.
A lot of the photos I've put into this bonus collection are very similar to shots I posted during the official 91 days that the project ran. The colors are different, but little else has changed. There are fewer leaves, perhaps, and the fields have been cleared, but there have been no permanent changes.
Being devoid of permanent changes is always a temporary state, though. In the two weeks since most of these photos were taken, new spaces for houses have already been cleared and the road construction goes on night and day. Maybe by this time next year, the world will look a little more different around here. And wouldn't that be something?
Here are some notes about the photos posted above. Thanks for reading.
6 November 2022 - "Blue Skies" - This photo. Again. I have taken so many versions of this photo, but this time, I think I almost managed to capture the blue of the sky.
7 November 2022 - "Reaching for the Moon" - This is an iPhone shot. There's some artifacting along the power lines, sure, but did you see the moon? From my camera phone? Amazing.
12 November 2022 - "Riverside" - Obviously, power lines have become something of a running theme over the past few months, but I don't think I've done exactly this shot yet.
13 November 2022 - "Mist" - For all my talk above about autumn colors and bright skies, it's been fairly wet this year, with many foggy and misty mornings. Which is lovely on days I don't have to drive.
16 November 2022 - "Coffee" - One of the campuses I work on has this beautiful little outdoor dining area behind the cafeteria. It's the single best spot on campus to come for a coffee break.
20 November 2022 - "Koma Inu" - China, Japan, Okinawa, and several other East Asian countries have their own versions of these guardian lion-dogs. Here in Japan, they're called "koma inu" and this particular one watches over the shrine where my daughter received her shichi-go-san blessing.
27 November 2022 - "The Road Home" - Just what the title says. I've been taking Lucy (the dog) for walks along some alternate routes and this is one of them. Beautiful day, wonderful walk, and did you see the colors?
Alright, I do love the nemophila. If you’re on the East coast of Japan, north of Tokyo, go to the Hitachi-Naka Kaihin (Seaside) Park when the nemophila are in bloom. It is absolutely worth the trip.
If you have a chance, visit the lavender fields in Hokkaido during the mid-summer blooms. It’s hot but it smells amazing.
Not that the rest of the year is bad, per se, just that there are only two really good months.
This is a lie. Leaving the house is never worth the effort. Unless, maybe, food is involved. Even then, that’s what delivery is for, right?
In all fairness, when I mentioned this to a friend he asked, “Did it change or did you change?” The answer is, “yes.”