Asleep in the ceramics museum.

Mosquitoes and Stinking Tatami

Now that the weather’s becoming warmer and warmer, everything reminds me of my arrival in Japan almost one year ago. The tatami mats in my bedroom once again exude that musty stink I met the first night I bedded down in Nagahama, and the mosquitoes humming in my ear wake me swatting in the middle of the night. The sun mounts the sky as early as 5 a.m. in this season, and so I find myself up before the alarm, out jogging or sitting with the teapot for a while. In this country, my lifestyle seems to change drastically between seasons. In winter I felt idle and dormant, and now that it’s spring I find myself grieving for that restful feeling. By summer I should snap out of it. In the meantime I’ve been enjoying the weather lazily, playing Scrabble and picnicking at Houkouen with Gillian, exploring pastoral Nagahama, out near my school on the farm where cows, goats, and an old horse hang around, and where there are shrines hidden in the bamboo forests along the way. Gillian and I even went minimalist camping last weekend at a spot on Lake Biwa in Makino. We went by train with only a one-person tent, a few blankets, a six-pack of Yebisu, and a guitar. We couldn’t get a fire started with the twigs we collected because the wind was ripping across the shoreline, so we settled for watching embers, and I listened to Gillian strumming old folk songs beside me.

[ Gillian reaching blindly for her wine glass while a feral cat finishes off the salmon from our picnic. ]

[ Photographs taken near a shrine on our way to Noukou farm, where I teach Wednesdays ]

[ Noukou Flora ]


[ Noukou Fauna ]


[ Camping on Lake Biwa ]