24th Year, Day 1

[Raspberry, lemon-liquor brownie cake made and mailed to me by my beloved Gillian Kidd.]

[A tag-team birthday celebration (gorgeous flier by Amanda).]

oakland, ca

[ crabby oakland pier reaching out toward 'the city' ]

[ then sun, sun, then sun ]

[ came upon a crab ]

Carolina Mutts and Scoundrels

[ riley. there are pups in that belly. ]

[ sneezy jazz pug ]

[ connie's kitchen. a good window for spotting gators. ]

[ lynx. 25 lbs. of lap cat. once spent 7 days in a tree, waiting to pounce the dog. ]

[ great papa davidson. cool hair. ]

[ leaping mutt in connie's backyard. ]

My first Independence Day overseas.

One of my co-workers came to me and said, “Nolan-san. Congratulations. It’s the 4th of July.” None of the other teachers understood why he was congratulating me. Some of them thought perhaps it was my birthday, and they just hadn’t been notified. A noticeable wave of self-conscious uncertainty swept through the room until someone finally asked me: “Nolan-sensei, kyou ga otanjobi desuka?” “No, it’s not my birthday. It’s the U.S.’s independence day.” “Oohhh,” they all said. “Like the Will Smith movie?”

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 ]

Ishiyama-Dera

The path to Ishiyama-Dera from the train station was flanked by whizzing cars arcing around Lake Biwa, and I didn’t feel like I was headed someplace significant, but more or less toward some practical destination—like a dentist’s office or a shoe store. When I arrived at the temple, the landscape transformed (in typical Japanese fashion) into expanses of lush flora and carefully raked gravel paths and gardens, along which dog-sized carp floated idly. The purification basin sat on one side of the narrow stream, and when I spilled the water over my hands it splashed the heads of the big fish, and they didn’t flinch or swim any faster than the slow current was carrying them. I wanted them to at least look up, but they pressed on as if it were going to rain.

Last Friday I took off work to visit this place, Ishiyama-Dera, the famous temple in Otsu where Lady Murasaki is purported to have written her Tale of Genji in a drab room “under the full moon light in August, 1004.” They’ve even erected a statue of the novelist, looking poised over her scroll, dampened calligraphy pen in hand. The temple was founded in 749, and the main hall, Hondou, is the oldest building in Shiga, built 850 years ago, and inside this hall is the room where Murasaki wrote the world’s first novel. Staring at the effigy of a woman entirely unknown, I couldn’t fathom poetry, scenes an artist would wish to paint, coming from her ivory hands, her bleak face.