The Melting World

Sarah made this painting based on a story she read about a boy who rode a dragon. She won the All-School Chiba Prefecture Award for this work. I just had to share this because she has such a great eye. Thanks, too, to Sarah’s mom, Frances, for making sure Sarah can be a free bird […]

Lately I have been listening to Ben Harper over and over again because it’s in our cd player in the car. I sing along with it during the recent long drives to and fro my son’s new school. Ben Harper is a down-to-earth singer/songwriter–maybe like a young Bob Dylan–his voice is not perfect, but carries […]

For the first time in late September I saw a place where hot spring waters are harvested for the many hotels dotting the Mt. Fuji landscape. The scene looked like my Catholic childhood imagination of Hell: yellowy scarred stains next to smoldering thick pools of spoiled oatmeal, yellowish-white fumes twisting and groaning like ghosts, the […]

Here my son gives his best show of separation pangs, perhaps for my benefit? After one week at this new nursery school, he now only begins to cry when I say goodbye at the school door, but then he reportedly quits crying after a few minutes and begins to play with joy. With two gifted […]

He started going here from this week. Now each morning he is waiting by the door with his shoes in hand, eager to go to school! What a joy to take him to such a place each morning. We have been blessed by the misty autumn morning beauty of Hokkaido all week.

View from son’s new school

Near Wassamu

Near Wassamu

In celebration of autumn, my favorite season…or in celebration of what my friend Keiko said means AISHUU ni HITARERU–that deep beautiful aloneness that sinks inside you during the fall. Above are recent pictures from a public park near the town of Wassamu, from walks at Arashiyama, and from the area surrounding my son’s nursery school.

Last Sunday we were up early, all three of us, which is a rare, maybe even a seriously endangered, occasion. We were up to drive out to see my son’s future nursery school students perform at their school festival. As we made the way to the car, our eyes turned in unison to see our […]