Japan Nature

After a rather dull autumn, winter is here.

You might not think so, since the leaves are still mostly on the trees and the daytime highs peak around 20 (68F), but there is a certain chill in the air now that wasn't present last week. Yesterday I got out of bed and my feet quickly became icy as I sat barefoot at my desk. But more telling of the change of season: all the moisture is gone from the air. From now til May, I won't go without hand cream, hair oil, and lip balm.

Definitely time to change the wardrobe to winter sweaters and warmer things. I want to knit again!

On Saturday, Tod & I went off to the edge of Tokyo to explore around one of the city reservoirs, Tamako. We wandered through a forested park and saw a surprising variety of mushrooms: the green one pictured above, a patch of bright red ones, a few shaped like snowmen, purple ones, orange ones, yellow ones, globular ones, and one as big as a dinner plate. They were delightful.

The rest of the exploration was mainly along 7km of long paved cycling route that runs around the reservoir. The lake itself is mostly drained as they shore up the dam, so that was a bit disappointing. Despite that, we observed nature on the boundary of the cycling road and the forest and had a good afternoon's walk.

Since noon, Tokyo's received 108mm of rainfall, 73% of August's average, and experienced a series of intense thunderstorms. It feels as though the city is going to be washed away.

As the first storm began this morning, I decided to pull up a chair on the verandah and watch it. The lightning bolts behind my building reflected off the glass covered Toppan highrise across the way. Thunder echoed and rumbled and drew louder and nearer. Low yellow-grey clouds trailed scarves of rain in the middle distance. It was beautiful and awesome. Then I watched a bolt hit a lightning rod on a building nearby and scurried inside as the clouds opened up over me.

Not everyone was able to find shelter. Five sewer workers were washed down a manhole earlier today. One has turned up in the Kanda River about 3 km from where he started. I heard the rescue sirens and helicopters a few blocks from here. He didn't live. The other four are still missing.

I stepped off the plane to a morning that felt like swimming in my own blood. The air in the city smells vaguely of chlorine like walking into the lobby of an indoor pool. I ought to enjoy it because I know it won't be long before I catch a whiff of the stinky sewers.

The heat and humidity really knocked me out after Adelaide's winter chilliness, so at lunch Tod took me out for eel to increase our summer stamina. Today is 土用丑の日 (one of two this year), considered to be the height of summer. Fatty grilled eel fends off summer blah and weight loss, though the tradition of eating it on this day started as a marketing gimmick 200 years ago.

Despite the dreadful weather, I am happy to be back in the city and at home.

Last year in mid-May, I wrote about a strange smell in the air that none of us quite agreed about. Wet dog? Smog? Sperm? Whatever it was, It's back again.

Also in the way of nature memoranda, yesterday the temperature hit 28.6 - hottest day of the year so far. Rainy season started in Okinawa and it won't be long before its here. Summer is certainly on its way. Bummer.

One of the charities that we raised money for at the Australia Day Gala Ball is Eco Future Fund. They do reforestation and forest maintenance projects in Japan, and also run forestation and wood-alternative projects overseas.

To help sell their mission, I created a short video that we played on the big screens on the night of the ball. I'm sure nobody actually watched it - I only caught a glimpse of it from the back of the room as I was running an errand - and that might be OK. It was a challenge to put it together in the free moments between my other work and I didn't have much material to use. But since I recruited MJ to narrate and wracked my brains to tell a positive story about how our auction earnings would be spent, thought I would put the finished piece on YouTube. Maybe someone else will see it and get involved.

Other videos from the ball are online, too, in my YouTube area

The rain started at about 6 pm, just on schedule with the predictions. By eight pm Typhoon #9, called Typhoon Fitow elsewhere in Asia, was dumping down and trees were whipping around, but we and the other diners at a Marunouchi restaurant didn't seem to mind - most hardly noticed. We waited a few minutes for a taxi at nine o'clock, so that we wouldn't have to walk home from the station.

I went to bed just before the eye of the storm passed over the city and I slept until about 3, when a door in the apartment slammed shut in the wind. Tod had gone outside on the verandah to watch the storm a while. He was soaking wet.

This morning the rain's falling in gusty bursts, trains are delayed and around town (but not too near us) are the expected post-storm tree falls and flooded areas, but the storm is speeding up north and the sun's due to shine this afternoon. The sky will be beautifully clear and pollution free.

A week ago, Tod heard the first crickets of the season down along the water near Kachidoki. Now they are singing their happy, cooling song every night in our neighborhood.

During the day the cicadas are still making a ruckus but with the temperature finally below 30, I don't think they'll be shrieking much longer.

Welcome, autumn!

If I close my eyes and smile nicely, maybe summer will go away?

Poor Japan is stuck under a weather system that is bringing us lots of sunshine and high temperatures. The last few days have brought record highs (in the upper 90s) to places around the country. Tokyo's had ten days over 33C/91F with no relief in the forecast until next week.

Summer started on Tuesday this week - rainy season ended and the temperature shot up - and I'm dreading the next three months. My plants are all wilty and so am I.

The home office was so hot this morning (32C by 11 am) that I turned on the aircon so that our server doesn't overheat and crash like it did all last summer. Now I feel trapped in the relative coolness because walking out into the rest of the house is almost oppressive. This is why I hate air conditioning.

Maybe I should just leave the server to cool alone, go out into the summer, and deal.

Four minute sunset

Just before 7 pm, I noticed that everything outside was glowing orange. The sun had poked through the rainclouds to give us a beautiful sunset. The sky was vivid but soon morphed into a grouping of bright spots in a shadowed blue.

Yesterday, Tracey asked me if I thought the air smelled like wet dog. I didn't smell anything doggy and attributed her odd sense of smell to a headcold. But on Tuesday I thought the air was fresh and salty like the seaside.

At dinner last night, Jim asked if we thought the city smelled like old shoes. Tod agreed that it smelled weird; he described it as "cut grass that's been sitting around." Yuka suggested the scent reminded her of sperm. I sniffed long and hard but couldn't smell anything over our newly planted lavender and mint.

Everyone seemed to feel unusually sleepy, too.

OK, something was definitely going on with the air.

Yuka says it's from a tree, but she couldn't remember the name. There are a lot of them near the Chinese Embassy, she says, and they smell bad when they are flowering. I wonder what tree it is...anyone know?

I did go for a walk today to shake off the Sunday blah. I ended up taking a good long hike through central Tokyo that racked up 14,000 steps and 12 km according to my manpokei.

Winter gardening in Tokyo

While I was out and about, I stopped to watch a crew pruning trees near Tokyo station. Two guys in the trees sawed off leafy branches, leaving tree silhouettes in their wake.

And on Hongo Dori I saw a plum tree blooming. It must sit in a micro-climate that gets just the right dose of sun and warmth because I've seen this particular tree bloom out of season before. Sure is arresting to see the pale petals fall on top of the bright yellow ginko leaves that litter the sidewalk just there.

Mature rice, ready for harvest

Harvesting rice is a lot of work. I have a deep appreciation of each and every grain I eat now that I know what goes into just one day of rice production. The Yanagis, and thousands of other Japanese families, toil to feed me and I am grateful.

Sunday morning at 6:30 on the dot, Hanako, Tsuchiya-san and I sat down to breakfast prepared by our hostesses, who were awake and cooking at 5:30. At 8:30, we were called over to the Yanagi’s house to dress and wait for further instructions. The waiting made me fidgety and irritable. I wanted to go pick rice, but here were indoors with Kimie, who served tea and edamame and offered us our choice of hats and boots to wear outside.

By 9:30 we were finally in the field, where Akira Yanagi, his grandson, mother, neighbor and two young boys were already at work. After a quick demonstration of harvesting skills we’d need to use, we were set to work.

The machine harvester

Akira has a harvesting machine that growls like a lawnmower, and it’s not far off in size. The harvester is pushed by hand through the rows, cutting the clumps of rice near the ground and binding nine of them together with twine before spitting the bundle out to the side.

My first task was to follow the harvester, picking up the bundles it spit out and gathering them into sets of seven. I cinched them together with a noose-like rope, then carried the 10 kilo bundle to one corner of the field.

It was hot – around 33 C (91F) - the sky was clear blue and sun beat down on us. In a few minutes, I was sweating buckets and so was everyone else.

The harvester doesn’t get all the rice; uneven rows or a misdirected push can leave clumps uncut. So someone has to hand-cut the clumps. After a while, I followed the hand-harvesters around, picking up their clumps of nine and tying them into bundles using rice straw from the last harvest.

The technique was simple and effective – belt a few strands of straw around the bundle, twist once, and then spin the whole thing around itself to tighten the twist, and finally tuck the ends under the belt. I kept getting the thumb of my glove stuck in the twist when I spun the bundle, but a good sharp tug always freed it.

Enjoying a much-needed drink

It wasn’t long before we took a break and everyone had a small bottle of tea. Japanese don’t drink much compared to Americans. Maybe because their diet is saltier and they retain water so don’t need as much going in. I don’t know, but one 300 ml bottle of tea wasn’t enough for me but nobody else was having more, so I didn’t either. Very soon it was back to work.

More tying, spinning, cinching and carrying got us one field cleared. We moved the piled sheaves from the side of the field into the truck, laying the bundles rice-end in and alternating the direction of the layers so that the rice was secure and the grains protected for transportation.

Three men took the rice off to hang it up to dry in the sun while the rest of us started on the second field. This time, I asked to try the hand-cutting. With a short, serrated curved blade in one hand, you grasp the clump of rice in the other hand and draw the blade across in one firm movement. The trick is to make your cutting stroke count - not to saw at the rice – while not pulling the clump out of the soft muddy earth while you cut. It took me a while, but I did eventually get the hang of it. I was not adept, but I managed.

Farmer Kristen

I cut out part of a corner for the harvester to turn in and a whole row along one side of the paddy, and then took a break on my own– cutting the rice was more intense than bundling and carrying – and drank the last little bottle of tea. I noticed that the sky was starting to cloud up on the horizon. The weather forecast called for afternoon rain, followed by a few rainy days in a row, so we wanted to get as much rice in today as possible. My energy was starting to flag, but I was determined not to fall behind.

The truck was back, but now parked further away, so I loaded up the wheelbarrows with Hanako and we loaded the remainder of the first field into the truck. Then I did some more tying and carrying before a break was called for lunch. We put what we had completed in the truck, tidied up our tools and rode back to the Yanagi’s for lunch.

Everyone was covered in mud and sweat. “Ladies shower first!” one of the men called out and that meant, really, that “foreign ladies” shower first. So I stripped down, surprised at how very, very wet my clothes were, and hopped into the shower. Hanako called in to me, “Do you have a change of clothes for the afternoon?” Oops, no. I hadn’t considered that. Kimie kindly loaned me an entire outfit, including a brand-new pair of her panties. I looked like a grandmother in her largest polka dotted polyester ensemble, but I was dry.

While we were in the field, Kimie had prepared a feast of tempura vegetables, simmered fish and tofu, pickles and cold somen noodles. It was plentiful and bountiful and everyone at the table dug in like they’d never eaten before.

Only I wasn’t hungry. My head throbbed, my teeth ached and my stomach hurt. Hanako noticed my lack of appetite and asked if I was ok. I wasn’t sure. I had goosebumps and was feeling cold. I’d stopped sweating and I was hot to the touch. Hanako lead me upstairs and put me to bed under a quilt. I slept while they finished lunch.

When Hanako back came upstairs to change into her field clothes, she told me I would stay there while they went back out. I sat up, sipped some tea and declared that I was fine, really. “Mom, I want to go out to play!” I pleaded jokingly. But she insisted I rest. She was right, of course, but I was terribly disappointed as I listened to their laughing voices piling into the truck and driving away without me.

I drifted off to sleep again to be awakened half an hour later by the pounding of hard rain on the tin roof. “Rain! Ah…Rain? Ah!! The laundry!” I leapt up to rescue the clothes and towels hanging outside the second floor balconies. Kimie raced up after collecting everything downstairs and we put the glass doors on their tracks and rehung the clothes – only slightly damp - on plastic racks inside the house to finish drying.

Kimiko wrings out her towel in the rain; Hanako laughs and drips into the house

That was the finish of the harvesting day, of course. Moments later the crew returned, soaked again but this time with rain. They were laughing and wringing out their clothes. We handed out all the towels and they changed – again – into clean dry togs.

Despite the heatstroke, I enjoyed the harvest immensely. I grinned like an idiot in the field, so happy to be joining in an aspect of life that is mostly hidden behind city supermarket price tags. And I hope this first harvest wasn’t my last.

(For more photos, see my Rice Harvest photo set on Flickr)

Sekiya-san & Motohei-san in the rice paddy. May, 2006

One evening last week in Matsudai, we heard the most delightful chorus of frogs - deep croaking, quick peeps, and a percussive almost wooden clapping. But as we approached the little garden pond for a closer look and listen, the frogs stopped their songs.

Kimie-san started talking to them. She called; they answered. We giggled. She called again and soon they were all chatting away. I was delighted. Her technique was simple.

She made a loud, hollow sound by closing her lips with air in her cheeks and in between her lips and teeth, then opening them quickly while sucking the air in. The resulting sound was a hollow, lip smacking pop. She repeated it a few times and the frogs talked back.

On another night, I went to the pond alone and tried it with the recorder running. It worked! Have a listen:

Frog Call 0'04" 72KB MP3

Last night, Tod proposed that we make a picnic lunch and enjoy an afternoon in the park today. Great idea!

I got up early and baked some treats, made sandwiches and an variety of things to nibble on. Tod ran out to the supermarket for a bottle of wine - an exceptionally good 1997 St Emilion Chateau de Lussac. We packed everything up and headed out of the house at 1.

At 1:03, a raindrop smacked Tod in the forehead. We returned to the house for umbrellas. By the time we got to the park at 1:45, the rain had stopped and started and stopped again, but the sky was dark and we heard the rumble of thunder. We found a pavilion marked on the map and beelined there. Within ten minutes, the deluge began.

The shelter kept us dry, but we hadn't counted on the mosquitoes. I smote a dozen or more, smacked at fifty and was bitten by...I'm afraid to count. But the food and wine were delicious and the company was entertaining, so it wasn't as bad as it might have been.

After the rain let up and we'd finished our wine, we visited the Science Museum. It's just the kind of place I love - lots of interactive, hands-on exhibits. And surprsingly little language on most of the displays. You have to figure things out on your own just like a scientist. I laughed and giggled and took my turn with the kids until closing time.

Today is Umi no Hi, Ocean Day, and even though I'm nowhere near the ocean, water is playing a large role in my holiday weekend.

It's raining here in Matsudai where I'm helping Hanako to put together the Hotta Rakashi Memorial Museum for the Echigo-Tsumari Triennial which opens on Friday. We've been thoroughly soaked walking in an unexpected warm summer downpour. The room we are transforming into a gallery has transformed into a lake in one leaky corner. Everything this weekend seems to be damp, but battling the water is creating a sense of comaradarie.

One way water has not played a role in the weekend: no opportunity to bathe or shower since we arrived. Maybe I should stop writing and go upstairs to see if the dormatory's spiderweb coated shower room actually works. Or perhaps I'll simply step outside and wait for the next deluge...

I still don't know what it is, but I just saw my mysterious woodland friend from December 2002. Only this time he was in the garden below my veranda. He paused amid the overgrown lawn, looked me straight in the the eye, then moved on.

And I have witnesses. Unfortunately none of the gathered friends could agree on what it was. Anaguma? Tanuki?

Sage's sinuous stems seek the sun

Happy solstice.

Afternoon light on the potted flowers

My urban rainforest. Click for larger version.

I can see I'm going to keep happy during tsuyu by watching the rain on my bamboo grass. The surface tensions between the rain and the leaves form these beautiful rounded drops that sit still on the leaves.

Can you see the dust?

I've had the doors and windows open for the last couple of days to admit fresh breezes. Now everything in the house is coated with a fine, gritty layer of crud. This is how it will be for the rest of the season.

I've learned to protect my equipment with dust cloths, but no matter how frequently I wipe things down, every surface will recoat the moment I open the doors and windows. Filthy city!

Neighborhood dog

On Saturday, I made a pinhole for the digital camera. It was easy. I drilled a 1 cm hole in the center of a plastic Nikon body cap and attached a pinhole with some black tape. Then a took a lot of photos. The best of the bunch are in a Flickr set.

Herb garden

On Sunday, Tod & I went for a walk, hoping to take more pictures, and ended up buying 30 plants, two big pots and some dirt. Then we took a taxi home and got all dirty planting an herb garden in the containers. I hope these do better than my previous gardening attempts.

Intensely fresh against a wet and dreary twighlight

Tod & I joined our neighbor Shinji on an outing to Satte, Saitama-ken, to view Japan's "other" spring flower, nanohana. It's called "rape" in English, which might contribute to why I never knew it in the US. When we eat it, we call it rapini.

I put a selection of our photos on Flickr if you want to see the carpet of brilliant yellow we experienced. I tried a watercolor sketch, but am not satified with it. I might use it for the basis of sone other drawing instead.

P.S. In case you wonder, it's na-no-hana, vegetable flower, not nano-hana, teeny-tiny flower.

Opening

We're in the season between plum and cherry blossoms. Some of the late ume are still blooming and a few hardy sakura are just beginning to open. I caught this one in the act yesterday afternoon in my neighborhood. Official blooming is predicted for March 25th in Tokyo.

Gigantic strawberries

Freakishly large

Orange light across the way

Is it possible that earthquakes happen more often when it rains? I know that's sort of like saying "every time I wear my blue underpants, the bus is late" but hey, I'm just throwing out a hypothesis.

Today was cold and soggy. This evening at 8:30, we had a nice shake, a magnitude 5.1 centered in Chiba-ken, just a couple dozen kilometers away.

The previous earthquake felt in Tokyo was on Saturday, January 14th. K and I were having a drink at Face Cafe, watching the trash float down the river near Ochanomizu Station. The tremblor at 3:30 was a 4.5 in Ibaraki-ken.

I mentioned the rain connection, and we talked about it a while. Maybe the wet ground transmits the shaking more. Maybe we're usually inside when it rains, and it's easier to feel earthquakes indoors. Maybe it rains because there is an earthquake coming. We didn't come up with a solid answer but I've learned I'm not the only person to wonder about this. There's a Q&A from the US Dept of Energy, though they pretty much dispel the idea.

I think it would be fun to get data on earthquakes and the weather then correlate it to see if I'm experiencing cognitive bias or if there might be something to this idea.

Or maybe I simply should stop wearing the blue underpants.

Snow, early Saturday morning.

It snowed, beginning at 4:01 am on Saturday morning (I know because my dear friend called me to say so) and ending on Saturday night sometime after pitch black set in.

Between those hours, we saw about 10 cm of snow fall on the city. I built a snowman in the park and watched the guard smile at it as he shut the gate for the night. I threw a snowball at Tod and watched him frown. I made cocoa from a bar of Cote d'Or Noir et Noir and enough milk to turn it milk chocolate-y. I opened the curtains in the living room and watched the snow fall.

Today the city was bedraggled white and grey. Shop owners took to the sidewalks with brooms, construction shovels, and hammers to break up the ice on the sidewalks. I slid down the hill, until I realised that the sunnier side of the street was melted clear.

More snow, please.

Delicate winter fruit on Mt. Futago

Looking southwest at 16:41.

With Venus at 16:53.

The evening sky at 6 pm

I woke to the sound of crickets this morning--a promise of cool weather to come. I recorded their quiet chirping outside my office this evening complete with kids playing and a train rushing past at the end:

Early Autumn Evening 0'56" MP3 (864 KB)

Nature tamed but still weedy in Tokyo

I passed a pleasant hour in Akasaka this afternoon. I had the presence of mind to set my keitai alarm before I started drawing so that I wouldn't be late for my lunch date. Time slips away very quickly when I'm playing with my pencils.

Bubbles on a temple basin. Koishikawa Enma.

Tall glass of water
Beads of liquid crystal form
How quickly ice melts

For the first time in a long while, my heart leaped and I exclaimed as I felt the jolt of an earthquake. This morning's tremor was abrupt and sent the G5 rocking back and forth on the rack.

It was only a magnitude 4.6, only a 2 on teh Japanese scale, and centered in nearby Chiba. I'm not sure why this one shocked me more than other recent ones, but I'm glad to know that I've generally gotten used to earthquakes.

A swarm of chartreuse gnats hovers in the sunlight. The air vibrates with life until the sun goes behind a cloud, then they disappear.

Plum blossoms herald the start of spring. They usually appear at the beginning of February. January 10th is too early.

The scent of ume flowers is intoxicating and each variety is different--fruity, spicy, heavily floral.

The colors of these buds charmed me with their old-fashioned combination of brown toned colors

Vivid plum blossoms against a blue sky lift our spirits out of the winter doldrums.

Snow samurai robot. Korakuen station, 31 December 2004

Snowfolks in the park.

Pretty flakes all morning long. It's such a rare event that I ran around filming it and set it to music. The snow is still falling--if it keeps this up we may see a centimeter or two on the ground by nighttime. I'll have to go out to shoot snow at night.

Tokyo Snow - small 711 K 0'49" MP4

Tokyo Snow - medium 1.7 MB 0'49" MP4

Tokyo Snow - large 4.8 MB 0'49" MP4

Fuji-san as viewed on approach to Narita this evening

The edge of typhoon Chaba (#16) blew across Kanto last night. At 1 am, I woke to hear rain pouring down. 14 mm fell that hour--about 10% of the month's quota all at once. The air was silvery grey with raindrops when I looked out the window.

This morning, the clouds play a time-lapse nature film. The atmosphere is blood temperature and gravid with humidity. Wind gusts 40 m/s from every direction and anything with makeshift aerodynamics--the watering cans, plants, tins of mosquito coils--now floats in the small pond on our veranda that formed in the rain.

The sky is lightening even as I type this and the weather forecast predicts a hot sunny day by noon. Don't bother with an umbrella today.

Despite dim prospects in for medals in Athens in the next few weeks, Japan's doing great in other record breaking areas. Mother Nature is having her own field day here in Tokyo.

This is the 40th straight day of manatsu-bi, midsummer days that reach 30 degrees or more.

It's the longest unbroken stretch of hot days since Tokyo meteorologists started taking notes in 1923. The previous record was 37 days in 1995.

Tokyo's new record doesn't touch the one set in Kobe in 1994: 76 miserable dog days. Kobe can keep that gold medal; that is one record I hope we don't break.

A typhoon blew through last week. The sunlit raindrops looked like a downpour of diamonds. So luxurious.

It's bloody hot here. Yesterday the weather service recorded Tokyo's highest temperature since they began measurements in 1923--it was 39.5 (just over 103 F) in Otemachi. 210 people were treated for heatstroke, but I don't think anyone died.

Being outside was like walking through blood.

Today was slightly cooler at 37.2 (99 F) but I had to dress up for the CEATEC poster photo shoot, so I was wearing cosmetics, pantyhose, and a suit. Atsuiiiiii!

The average temperature in Tokyo for 7/21 is 25.8 but today's average is 33.3. I can only hope that this ends very soon or I am going to melt.

In the last two weeks, cockroaches seem to have taken up residence in our bathroom. On alternate evenings, I spy a reddish-brown monster the size of my thumb hanging out near the sink or in the shower.

Gokiburi are not my my list of Things I Can Kill, so we chase them around the room, trap them in a glass and fling them over the veranda into the garden below.

I'm sure the neighbors love us.

This morning I attended a 9 am meeting at FCCJ. I was dressed and out the door at 8:30, just in time for rush hour on the Marunouchi line.

A hundred people in the train car with me multiplied the effects of today's sticky weather. By the time I reached my stop, 11 minutes after I'd boarded the train, my upper lip was beaded with perspiration, my hair was damp, and sweat dripped down the curve of my spine.

I'm lucky, though, because I got to come home and strip off my clammy clothes after the meeting. While everyone else suffers in their suits and ties, I'll spend the rest of the day in a t-shirt (and not much else).

I listened to the first drops of rain fall this morning, breaking the Sunday morning silence with faint plop-pitters against our deck umbrella. This will be a familiar percussion for the next six weeks.

Although I don't think it will be officially declared for a few more days, I do believe tsuyu, the rainy season, has begun. UPDATE: The start of tsuyu was declared today.

Look at that forecast... For current tsuyu details, weathernews has a national tsuyu map and information about tsuyu on the Kanto plain where Tokyo sits.

Tsuyu begins in the southwest and moves northeastward. Last year Tokyo saw on June 10th and said goodbye to it on August 2nd, but on average it starts on June 8th and ends July 20th. I guess we'll have to wait to find out how this year's rainy season compares. Here's hoping for short and wet.

When the rain is so fine that it's more a mist than drops, should you carry an umbrella?

I didn't. The walk home from the station was like being in a room with a vaporiser. My skin is moist and supple but my hair is frizzy beyond belief.

Mother Nature reads my weblog, apparently. She cleared the skies and brought us the warmest day of the year so far. (If summer were always like today--28 degrees and only slightly humid--I'd be a happy girl.)

This afternoon, we lunched in Hibiya Park under a wisteria arbor near one of the ponds and watched salarymen and pensioners interacting with the turtles. I brought muffaletta (check for the recipe on Thursday) and plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit, and a few cookies that a crow snatched from our picnic as we stood to look out over the pond. Sneaky crow.

This evening, we met Jim & Yuka at Canal Cafe in Iidabashi. It's a lovely spot on the outer moat of the Imperial Palace with a view across to the Chuo and Sobu line trains. There's a rather expensive restaurant and a more reasonably priced dock-side bar. We quaffed some wine and then walked up Kagurazaka to Sofra, a Turkish restaurant. The food is good, but overpriced and the service is awful. Thankfully, we missed the belly dancing. Sadly, there aren't a lot of options for Turkish food in Tokyo, so we'll probably go back.

We've shifted from the alternating cool and warm days of April to the alternating blue and grey skies of May.

Tsuyu, the rainy season, has already begun in Okinawa (about 10 days earlier than average) and though it won't officially start here until June, it's obviously on its way. The past few days have offered a preview--grey skies, sprinkling-then-pouring rain and dull heavy air.

It's good for the plants but not for my spirits. Even though I love rain, endless days of grey get to be a bit much.

Still, tsuyu beats summer. I'm already thinking ahead to August with a certain amount of dread. I want to escape the city to somewhere less miserable. A summer rental in the mountains or at the seaside...

The results of today's planting. I've grouped the herbs based on how much water and sun they like. They look so fresh and green and healthy now. I will take care of them faithfully and hope they survive the summer.

Lamb's Ear is the softest plant ever. I love stroking its leaves and was very happy to do so at the herb shop we visited today.

I didn't buy any, though. Instead I picked up parsely, sage, rosemary, thyme, margoram, basil, shiso, lemon balm, tarragon, wild strawberry, lettuce, yarrow, lavender, and eucalyptus. I would have purchased more, but I'm not sure I have enough pots or space to plant everything.

This little garden shop in tucked away in Harajuku--right next to the Yahoo Cafe and around the corner from Fujimamas but I never remember what it's called--is the city's best source for all sorts of medicinal and cooking herbs, ornamental grasses and quirky garden plants.

As soon as I have time tomorrow, I will be planting these in our little niwa off the living room. This summer's kitchen garden!

This noodle delivery man pedaled into Edogawa park last night at sunset, hopped off his bike, and looked around perplexed. Which of the dozens of parties in the sprawling park beyond were these noodles for, anyway?

Spring, she is fickle. After a warm and sunny yesterday, we've got a leaden grey sky and it's only 9 degrees. Brrrrr. There go the cherry blossoms. Ah, well, they will be back next year.

I contributed a short piece to Four Corners to commemorate this year's hanami and to celebrate the launch of this new online magazine.

This morning I'm sitting out on the veranda working on an article for a design magazine. It's a gorgeous morning--the sun is burning off some early morning clouds and the day promises to be warm.

The sakura beyond the fence and across the tracks is just starting to give up its petals to the wind. Occasional gusts blow confetti upward or shower pink snow on the passing trains. The residents on the third and fourth floors of the building next to this lone tree have an eye-level view and have been capturing the spring glory in photos.

Around 8:30 a woman in a yellow t-shirt and unbrushed hair came out onto the 4th floor balcony to wave her keitai at the tree--an incantation for a friend.

Shortly after ten, a young man in a blue-tipped white t-shirt hauled out a professional-looking digital camera and snapped shots of the tree before catching me watching him. He carefully loaded the camera into a huge bag and ran down the stairs--on his way to party and take more pictures, I'm sure. A half dozen people have left the building with backpacks and duffles overflowing with picnic supplies.

Later today, when the article is done and Tod's awake, I think we'll take a walk under the sakura at the 33rd Annual Bunkyo-ku Sakura Matsuri near Myogadani.

Eliza Scidmore was late 19th century American travel writer and photographer (and contemporary of Nellie Bly) who often travelled to Japan. She suggested and organized the donation of over 2,000 cherry trees that line the avenues of Washington, DC.

She died in Geneva in 1928, but the Japanese government asked for her ashes to be interred at the Foreigners Cemetery in Yokohama. I visited her grave today. It's not a particularly interesting monument as far as they go, a polished granite sarcophagus with an inscription, but it forged an interesting connection to my life at the moment: the sakura are blooming and I've been spending lots of time in cemeteries surrounded by cherry blossoms.

Toes curled in wool socks
Ache for balmier weather--
Frosty hanami.

Hands thrust in pockets,
Sake abandoned on lawn;
Fingers dream of Spring.

Rosy chilly cheeks
Compete with sakura pinks;
The finer blush wins.

Researchers at Osaka Prefectural University have developed a way to speed up the growth of moss. By adjusting the light, temperate and nourishment, the researchers can grow Racomitrium japonicum in two months, rather than the usual two years.

They say that this can help to alleviate the urban heat-island effect.

Imagine that. I envision green, moss-covered buildings, dripping into silent streets--a post-apocalypse, anti-urban landscape.

But when I snap back to reality, I see a different picture: withered moss covering rooftops, where gardening is mandated to combat the city's heat. Noone can see the moss, which is fine because the enthusiastic experiment has dried up from too little of that careful adjustment of light, temperature and nourishment.

Yesterday the first warm gale of spring, haru ichiban, blew through Japan. Although it didn't reach Tokyo, it was pretty windy here and today's weather feels like spring has arrived for sure. The warmth is a welcome change from days we've been shivering through lately.

This morning I opened all the windows to air out the apartment and then gave the veranda a good washing. Afterwards, I burned some incense and enjoyed a cup of coffee to celebrate the sun.

It's too early to replant the little garden off the living room, but I'm itching to do it. I'll settle for planning instead. This year I will make it a true kitchen garden--lots of herbs, as usual, but some vegetables, too: lettuces, peppers, beans. Maybe some berries. I don't believe I have enough room for melons, eggplants or cucumbers, but I can probably squeeze in some tomatoes. I wonder if there's a Japan equivalent to Seeds of Change?

Ume in bloom. Itabashi, Tokyo. January 18.

The first sign of spring. The rest arrives on February 3rd, the lunar new year.

It's been so mild this winter that we've gone without heat until just lately. In fact, the heat's not on now, at ten minutes to midnight on December 29th. Amazing.

Tokyo winters are never terribly cold (compared to Chicago or Pittsburgh, that is) but this one seems warmer than average. Could be my imagination, but November into early December seemed warmer and wetter than usual. We're finally getting typical crisp, clear December days but it seems like they came a few weeks later than usual.

Weather's a little tricky to recall. I could be just misremembering past years. But according to this nifty page from the Japan Meteorological Agency I'm not off base. http://www.data.kishou.go.jp/normal-e/mrep_e.html

December's data's not in yet (of course) but I be it will be warmer and wetter than usual.

A ripe fruit hangs like a Christmas ornament in my neighbor's garden.

Between the black asphalt of Kasuga-dori and the wide brick pedestrian walkway, lies a verge planted with large flowering shrubs--Japanese camellias--that begin to bloom around this time of year. The vivid pink blossoms against dark green foliage herald the coming holidays more insistently than any Xmas illumination.

In the flower shops, cyclamens echo the camillias' palette while the floral newcomers, poinsettias, clash with their deep red leaves.

Can you identify this caterpillar? It was crawling along the sidewalk in a residential area of Beppu, Oita prefecture when I snapped its photo on October 13. It's quite pretty, but I've no idea what it is.

The bulbous, bright orange head is unusual so it should be easy enough to ID, but I can't find anything that looks like it or any references on the Internet.

I checked my usual references: What is This Caterpillar?, the USGS Caterpillars of Eastern Forests and closest to home, Fukuoka Butterflies (in Japanese) but I'm stumped.

While I was being winked at by this praying mantis, Jim & Yuka were documenting park outing more fully. Read all about our afternoon in the wilds of Kosihikawa Botanical Garden over at Wirefarm, and see the 1 minute video Yuka made. Yes, I am hugging a tree...at least there wasn't any footage of me whittling branches or chewing sticks.

4:20 am - Tod comes to bed.
4:35 am - I rise for a glass of water...
4:50 am - 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Hokkaido. It rocks our house gently for about 45 seconds
5:10 am - First train rumbles past.
5:51 - 5:59 am - Rainbow over the Toppan building. I can see both ends. (Click for larger images.)

6:11 am - Coffee's brewing...

I'm not sure what sort of beetle this is, but it's lovely, isn't it? I spotted it on the steps in a park near Kourakuen station.

The praying mantis appeared in the same location the day after the beetle. The toad, bufo japonicus formosus, also known as Azuma-Hiki Gaeru or Common Eastern Toad, also lives in the park. There are dozens of them and they like to hop around on rainy nights.

I rescued a butterfly.

It was struggling against the electric breezes in the hallway between the Oedo line and Mita line at Kasuga.

A sucker for struggling creatures, I bent down to help it. As I extended a hand to shield it from the breeze, it crawled onto my finger then clung on for three minutes while I carried it through the station to the nearest exit.

It kept its white wings, fringed in butter underneath, folded as we took the escalator up. Its darkly striped antennae held perfectly still during the journey but as we crested the top of the escalator, it gracefully uncurled a steel blue proboscis longer than its fuzzy pale green body. I couldn't feel it tasting my finger.

When we drew near the exit, I gave it a quiet word of encouragement, said goodbye then tried to sit it on the edge of a sign. It fluttered off, alighting briefly on the wickets before heading up the stairs to the fresh air.

Then I turned back and caught the train to work.

It's been unseasonably chilly the past few weeks. I am grateful for the extended coolness.

The average high temperature for July 9th over the last 30 years is 28 degrees (82F) with a low of 21 degrees (72F). This year's going to drag the average down; JWA's forecast a high of 24 and a low of 20 (75/66F).

No doubt the mercury will creep up as July heads towards hot, sticky August. I hope that in the middle of the wilting season next month, I can look back and remember this cool morning when my feet felt chilly and I could see the steam rising off my coffee.

Tsuyu, the rainy season, began on Monday. Oddly enough, it rained neither Monday nor today, so how did they know it was tsuyu?

They checked the calendar, then confirmed by looking at satellite photos of the cloud cover.

Himawari, Japan's weather satellite, was retired a few months ago. Now the Japanese weather agency has to rely on American satellites which don't give them 24 hour coverage over Japan. There's a plan to launch a new satellite - MTSAT - later this summer but it won't be in operation until the end of this year.

I suppose tsuyu proclamations don't have to be very precise but it sure would be nice to have good coverage for typhoons.

This morning, I found a tiny ant crawling across my foot as I sat at my desk. When I went to put him back into the wild outdoors where all ants belong, I discovered his brethren carrying a dead beetle out of my house. It was like a military strike.

While dozens of scouts and support troops scurried around helping and searching, a small platoon had the beetle by its legs and was booking it across the carpet and then down the ethernet cable we have draped across the threshold. In five minutes, the beetle was hauled from beneath the heater, trucked across the veranda and slid under the palm.

In less than ten minutes every ant was out of the house. Their efficiency was extremely impressive. Do you think ants work with the same ants every day? Or do they get assigned to the tasks at random? Do ants get assignments??

Last spring, we discovered tadpoles, otamajakushi, in a nearby park. We watched them develop and took delight in stopping on our way by to peek at them. In Tokyo, you have to enjoy the little details of nature when you can find them.

Needless to say, we were surprised and disappointed when they vanished. It was shortly after they started to bud legs, but before they were fully developed into frogs. Maybe a cat ate them or perhaps schoolboys had carried them off in jars. We didn't know.

So this year, we've been watching the new crop with interest but expecting another vanishing act. Only they didn't vanish. Instead, we caught them in the act of escaping the pond.

Dozens of miniature frogs, no bigger than a garbanzo bean, struggled out of the water yesterday afternoon. They weren't hopping, exactly. They were more like froggy toddlers trying to keep their balance without toppling back into the pond.

They lined up along the border between the water and the land. Waiting for something, but what?

I don't care what the Japan Meteorological Agency says, I declare today the start of tsuuyu, the rainy season.

Officially, it won't begin until early June. Doesn't matter that we've have wet tsuuyu-like weather for the past week. It's not actually 'til June. And it ends in July. That's the traditiaon and weather patterns be damned.

It really makes no difference when it's official. The extended wet weather means that it's time to drag out all the mould-preventative and dehumidifying things.

Containers full of dessicant, DryPet brand, will sit on shelves in my pantry for the next two months. Sachets of the same stuff need to go into the dresser drawers. I must to stock up on kabi-killa, mould killer, for the bathroom.

No matter what you do, no matter how much dessicant you put in strategic locations or how careful you are with cleaning, the damp and humidity make it a challenge to keep dry. Follow tsuuyu with the sticky summer and there's no way to avoid mould. But battling it keeps it to a minimum, and I'm ready to get armed for the fight.

Last spring I bought some greenery for the veranda of our new apartment. This rather dull-looking, waist-high shrub is an orange jasmine. The people at the shop told me it would bloom wonderfully scented flowers.

But last year, there were no blooms, just a collection of green leaves. We were disappointed.

Two days ago, the plant fulfilled its promise and produced a single blossom. It's not much to look at; about 2 cm long and hardly distinguishable from a leaf unless you look closely.

But it's so highly perfumed that this one tiny flower can be smelled from the far end of the veranda and even in the office when I leave the door open.

I truly hope that it makes flowers one at a time. The jasmine scent sort of clashes with the toilet paper...

Today's the spring equinox, a national holiday in Japan and my favorite holiday of the year. It's the only one I've managed to celebrate consistently for the last seven years. Every year--grilled mushroom and pepper sandwiches.

You might not think that's such a big deal, but I've lived in three different countries in the course of the last seven springs. Few other holidays are consistent from nation to nation but the Sun is faithful. Every year we have a Spring Equinox and the other three solar holidays, too, and I never forget them.

To celebrate, I wanted some flowers for our table so Tod & I walked to the flower shop that's recently opened up the street. They don't seem to have a name, but they do have a great selection and the lady who runs it is really nice to me, unlike Hana Ban on the corner where they never make suggestions, offer the same three flowers (roses, orchids and mums) every week, and always seem like they'd rather not wait on me.

Tulips were what I craved and I found seven different kinds at the nameless flower shop. After a 30 second inner debate on the luxury of buying a lot of tulips, I picked up the entire display jug, sat it on the counter and said "Zembu de."

"All of these pink ones?" she said, pointing at the four pure pink ones that were bundled together.

"Well, all of them!" I gestured a bit more broadly at the whole jug full.

"Arigatou gozaimasu!!" she beamed. She got a big sale and I got a discount. 17 tulips for the price of 15. I love that flower shop and the living room looks a lot more festive now.

Happy spring!

Yesterday I walked over to Korakuen, the traditional Japanese garden not too far from home.

I strolled through the plum orchard and breathed in the delicious sweet scent of the blossoms. All the trees smelled different; every shade of pink keyed to a different olfactory tune. The breeze smelled like perfume. Mmmmm.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful weather!

It's 12 degrees (54 F) and sunny. The air feels mild and smells like Spring; there are plum blossoms everywhere. I have the doors and windows open to air out the house. What a joyful day.

Wow! It's snowing!

Real snow from the sky, not imitation snow.

It looks so peaceful and there's almost 2 inches of very wet snow.

Tod woke me up at 2:15 this morning to show me the snow. It snows so rarely in this heat island that it's quite an event when we get some. I had no idea it would still be snowing this morning. The blanket of snow on gardens and rooftops looks lovely.

It won't last long (it will turn to rain this afternoon) so I'm going back outside to enjoy it.

I've told several people about the badger sighting and they have been incredulous.

"But they are mountain animals..."
"Maybe it was a tanuki?"

So I decided to seek the opinion and comments of my neighbors. I tacked a notice on the community bulletin board.

It says "Sunday 12/1 around 10:30 at Kawaguchi Apartments, I think I saw an Anaguma. Is it someone's pet? Am I going crazy? Have you see it? If so, please e-mail me."

I included a picture of a Japanese badger (not the one I saw) and my picture so everyone will know that I am a crazy badger-sighting woman.

At about 10:30 this evening, walking home from returning the rented DVDs, I spotted what I thought was a big grey cat slinking up the stairs at the apartment building next to ours.

Only it wasn't a cat at all. But I don't know what it was. I've been searching on the 'net to no avail. It's not a weasel/stoat, tanuki, raccoon, or ferret, as far as I can tell. It might have been a Japanese badger, but from the photos I've found, the tail is different...can anyone identify this animal? I didn't have my camera with me (drat!) but here's a description:

length: approx 1 meter (including tail)
legs: short, black, no defined joints or hips
tail: pretty bushy, grey with black at end. length is about as long as the body
fur: sort of fluffy, grey/brown with black legs, tail end. lighter markings on ears and top of head
ears: small, pointy, dark
head: about as wide as body, triangular, whitish stripe down the middle towards nose

What the heck is a wild animal doing in my paved-over neighborhood??

This little guy is my officemate. I call him Jumping Spider. Every morning he makes his way across the wall above my desk. He usually pauses around my monitor and I give him a cheery "good morning" then he's on his way again. I'm not sure what variety of spider he is, but he's fairly small and not very threatening. I like his little white legs.

But this morning, we both noticed an interloper on our wall. Ms. Big Brown Spider . She's maybe not that much larger than Jumping Spider, but she's bulkier. Jumping Spider ran in her direction and she retreated, but after JS turned away, Ms. Big took a second look. For a moment, I thought there might be a fight, but eventually they headed off in opposite directions.

I think these are both Hasarius adansoni (Adanson's House Jumper Spider) of opposite sexes. These "house jumpers" eat mosquitos so I hope they stick around a while.

Japan has some amazing spiders. These little guys aren't too impressive, but check out Common Spiders in Japan to see a gallery of spiders with good photos.

Sun set at 4:36 this afternoon. By the time we reach December, the sun will disappear at 4:28. We may as well live at the North Pole.

Every year at about this time, I'm suddenly surprised by the short days. I know it's nearly winter and I should expect it, but come on--4:28? There's still too much to do for the day to be over. Maybe it's because I'm a morning person, but after the sun sets my activities slow to a relaxed halt.

Still, we have it better than Chicago, where things got dark at 4:33 today, or London, where people were turning on lights after 4:16.

If you want to see what time the sun sets today, go to Time And Date.com and type your city's name in the Search box. They also have a nifty countdown that tell you how long until a date. It's 1234 days until my 40th birthday!

The past week has been an early blast of winter--chilly wind, even a hint of snow in the air, though none's actually fallen. Everyone is predicting a cold one this year.

On the streets, the fashionable are wearing velvet blazers or light jackets and have wrapped incongruously thick and bulky scarves around their necks. I see this every winter and I wonder if there is a Japanese superstition about keeping your neck well bundled.

I don't have a scarf, but today I dug out my fuzzy slippers and tossed my lap blanket over my legs as I sat in the office. My fingers are chilly, but I'm not willing to turn on the heat so early in the season. After all, it's still 14 degrees (57F), hardly icy by anyone's standards.

The sun is setting now. Tonight I'll warm myself with some oden or maybe just lots of nice, steamy tea.

At 7:00 am the sky was cloudy and by afternoon it looked like we were in for a good, long rain. It was pouring buckets when Tod called at 5:00 saying everyone was being sent home early because of the typhoon.

The rain slowed at about 7:30 and we went out for dinner. The wind was blowing nicely and everything smelled fresh and clean. By the time we finished eating, we finally had our typhoon. We walked home through gusty winds and driving rain. Typhoon 21 was a bad one, the strongest in 60 years. Two people died during the storm, a ship ran aground, 270 flights were cancelled, and there was a blackout of almost 12,000 homes in Kanto.

Despite the dangers, there's something delightful about bad weather. On the way home, I smiled, ran and danced in the rain. I laughed as I wrung my skirt out before going into the convenience store. After arriving home completely soaked to the skin, we put on cozy pajamas and laid in bed with our laptops.

This morning the sky is clear and blue.

It's been an awfully long time since I felt an earthquake...there's been a few in other parts of Japan but nothing in Tokyo for well over a month.

I get nervous when I don't feel the earth wiggle a bit. If the pressure builds up for too long, there's a bigger chance that things will topple when it finally does give.

Wonder if people who've always lived on fault lines feel this way? Am I especially sensitive because I've only been in the danger zone for four years? Earthquakes are starting to feature in my dreams; I hope I feel the earth move (just a little) soon.

Bloodlust for mosquitos.

I'm not the sort to kill insects but mosquitos are an exception. I despise them. The damp weather has caused a boom in the population and they are finding their way inside. That's not too hard since we have no window or door screens in this building.

When I see one, I attack before it can bite me. In fact, I think I just jammed a finger slamming it into the ceiling during an assault. However, the foe was vanquished so I'll enjoy a bit of pain with my triumph. One less mossie to bite me. The world is made safe--or at least my office is.

(Props to mjd-s for the supa-graphic!)

Tonight we should be able to see the Perseid meteor shower if today's bank of heavy clouds goes away and light pollution doesn't spoil the show.

I remember the first time I saw the Perseids. I was at a drive-in with a friend during a university break. The movie was too stupid to capture my attention, so I was scanning the sky for constellations. Tim thought I was nuts when I distracted him from the on-screen action to look at the meteors.

It was a good display that year; I saw about 20 in the remaining hour of the movie. I hope I catch a few this year. I like being reminded of my place in the universe--a tiny speck of animate carbon on a pebble orbiting a spark of fire.

I found an inchworm creeping up the spearmint in my garden yesterday. Last week there was a slug slithering alongnear the thyme. A month ago, a caterpillar grew huge on my basil and parsley. Spiders love the bush basil.

I seem to be harboring a nice little ecosystem of plants and bugs. Quite surprising, really for a 2nd floor container garden. I've never seen a slug or an inchworm in Tokyo before.

Typhoon Chataan blew through yesterday (so much for too little rain) and by 2:30 this morning, it was extraordinarily windy. We battened down the hatches and went to sleep. This morning the sky is bright and clear except for an appalling haze of pollution around the horizon.

It's stopped raining. Yesterday's weather was hot and humid--typical Tokyo summer. We're due to have thundersorms over the next couple of days, but that's not a typical rainy season all-day drizzle. Looks like tsuuyu is over. If so, that was a very short rainy season.

Farmers rely on a long tsuuyu to keep the rice wet while the grains start to form. Not enough rain early on and the crop could falter or fail, driving up the price of rice in the shops. Rice is already expensive; a 2 Kg bag runs about 1,000 yen. That's about $1.85/lb compared to $0.80/lb in the US. Now in the US it's not a big deal since rice is a side dish but here in Japan rice is the main dish and everything else is a side dish!. So expensive rice is bad for the family budget.

Bring on those thunderstorms...

otama-jakushi is the Japanese word for tadpole. We've been watching these grow in the Tokyo War Memorial Park near Korakuen station. Their heads are bulging out now and if you look carefully, you can see the budding legs (not in this photo, though, sorry!).

The park was also the site of my first dragonfly (tanbo)sighting of the season, across the tiled plaza hovering near another manmade pond.

I cling to the small wonders of nature in my overly paved environment.

Someone flipped a switch and turned summer on. The weather is sunny and hot during the day with just enough humidity to feel sticky. The evenings are wonderfully warm. There's no excuse not to spend lots of time outdoors.

The veranda has become our extra, outdoor room--we eat breakfast and dinner out there, carry our laptops out to work and generally spend as much time as possible there. We've got charcoal arriving on Friday, so we'll be set to grill this weekend. Soon enough it will be tsuyu and we'll be soggy with the rain.

Last night we tried a Mexican restaurant in Ochanomizu and on the way home, paused on a bridge over the Kanda River to take this photo looking towards the train station and Akihabara.

It was about 9 pm--look at all the people on the train platform! They are heading home after spending dinnertime at sports bars watching Japan's first game in the World Cup (it was a 2-2 draw against Belgium).

Tree trimming in our back yard. From forest to manicured garden in a day.

The joys of container gardening are not to be overlooked. On my tiny balcony, I've got a healthy dose of nature. And most of it is edible: mint, rosemary, sage, basil, marjoram, thyme, parsely, bay. What's not edible is flowering: daisy, lavender, marigold, impatiens, pinks, petunia.

It gets my attention every day. I water it, pluck dead blossoms and harvest herbs for dinner. It pays me back by bringing a smile to my face when I brush my hands across the scented plants.

Today the weather is forecast to reach 28 degrees (82 F). It seems like a good day to break open the box of summer clothes. Although it's too early in the season for shorts, there are a few favorites that I'm looking forward to unearthing.

But it's also time to shop for there are two dresses that I've worn so frequently in the past three summers that they need to be replaced. I packed them and moved them to the new apartment exactly so I could find their replacements this summer. Shopping online is a bother and a half, but I know the clothes will fit when I buy at J.Jill and Eddie Bauer.

If you're ever curious about the weather in Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, you can check out Yahoo Japan's Bunkyo pinpoint weather page.

I love this page because it's so granular. Forecast, temperature, anticipated precipitation, and wind are shown in three hour increments. It's updated four times a day and it's almost always correct. I'm looking forward to a warm, sunny afternoon though it's cloudy and grey right now.

My prediction was wrong. The sakura appeared on Saturday!

Our long walk took us along the Kanda river near Edogawabashi. The park there is lined with cherry trees that hang over the water. So beautiful!

The trees should be in full bloom later this week. I wonder if the season will last until next weekend; once they start to blossom the trees get it over with pretty quickly. The local sakura matsuri are all scheduled for early April--about 2 weeks from now--I think the trees will be green by then!

The sakura are almost ready to bloom. The buds are huge and swollen but not quite popping out yet. Wednesday or Thursday next week, I'd guess. That's about ten days earlier than usual. I'm looking forward to walking under the pink clouds of trees that give up their petals within a few days of blooming. Looks like Spring is really here.

Yesterday's crisp fall day inspired us to have lunch in the Imperial Palace north garden. It is an oasis of nature in the middle of the business district.

As we sat on a bench eating our lunch, we could see Tod's office building, but the wind through the trees scrubbed the air clean of city sounds and smells.

It is a quiet time of year for gardens, summer flowers are mainly done and we are another month away from leaves turning color. But sitting among the trees and sculpted shrubs with large expanses of green on every side helped to put me back into balance.

Stress just melts away when you're sitting on a park bench, eating a sandwhich and listening to the sounds of crickets.

A glint of light caught my eye.

A red-bodied dragonfly angled its wings to soak in the warmth of the morning. The gossamer wings reflected the light of the sun.

I moved closer to look at him. As I approached, he raised his long, crimson body and turned his head toward me to assess the danger. His giant eyes framed a cat's smile.

He didn't fly away. He turned his head back and settled himself, readjusting his wings to meet the sun. I wished I had wings for sunbathing, too.

Typhoon season is upon us. From August's hot and muggy weather, we've reached September's torrential rains.

Typhoons are the Pacific version of hurricanes. This week we've been seeing rain caused by the arms of Typhoon 14. It's parked at the western end of Japan and it's predicted to head north towards Korea instead of east to Tokyo.

Still, it's a lot of windy rain.

Well, I was right about those earthquakes. The two on Tuesday & Wednesday paved the way for one whose epicenter was in Tokyo proper.

8-18, 4:53
Magnitude: 4.0
Location: Tokyo 23 Wards

Oddly enough, nobody outside Tokyo felt it, according to Tenki's map. Usually the effects of a quake spread a little further out. Maybe all of Tokyo's buildings absorbed it.

It wasn't a big earthquake, just enough to wake Tod up a bit. I wake up for all sorts of things Tod sleeps right through, so if I wake up it's not a good indication of severity. If Tod rolls over, then the earthquake was worth waking up for.

"Semi shigure" describes the shower of cicada song that fills the air in midsummer. It is a perfect 5 syllables, just right for haiku.

Haiku, in case you've forgotten from your 8th grade English composition class, is a three line poem with a 5-7-5 syllable pattern. The poem must include words to invoke time, particularly a season. The words are often the names of plants or animals that are associatated with a certain time of year.

Oogoe de
Ame ga futeiru
Semi shigure

That's one of my own haiku which loosely translated means "Rain is falling with a loud voice, cicada showers." Haiku are difficult to write. The best ones are oblique; mine are always too direct. I claim it has to do with my lack of vocabulary, but my English ones are too direct as well.

The weather forecast predicts a 36 degree high today. Certainly the hottest day of summer. A good day to go meet a friend at Imojin and eat red bean ice and sip green tea. The office was 33 when I walked in this morning. Thank goodness for aircon.

Tokyo summers are dreadful. June brings rain, then July and August follow with their hot and humid glory.

There are plenty of distractions to keep people's spirits up. The cool blue and white patterned cotton of summer kimono; paper fans emblazoned with advertising and handed out on busy streetcorners; the delicate tinkling of glass windchimes. Nature is reproduced on the stuff of daily life--dishes, towels, clothing, linens.

Morning glories have their own summer fetivals. It's cool enough to enjoy an early morning flower festival. Thousands of pots of flowers turning their faces to the sun is a sight to see.

And at night, fireworks turn the sky into a garden of fire. There are a dozen fireworks festivals scattered around Tokyo this year. Some will attract 850,000 people. Sitting among them, it is amazing to hear the crowd fall silent as the show begins. The collective gasp at the first explosion echoes across the banks of the river.

So it's hot, but pretty. Japanese tempers never flare, like mine does. The only cranky Japanese person I've ever witnessed was 2 years old.

Today's Weather in Tokyo: hot and humid. (It is summer after all!)