The Melting World

Out back of our dilapidated public housing is an unkempt field of beauty. A sturdy pine tree, in its classic Christmas shape, stands near to where a house used to be long ago. Dragon willow trees spring and curl up tenaciously even though the city workers mow them down, and now patches of daffodils and […]

There are days when the weather gives us something unexpected, a gift of unusual light and depth of color. This morning on our way to my son’s school, we saw storm clouds forming at all four directions of the city, and since we are surrounded by mountains, only half of the world had traces of […]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FUCHI! Fuchi is the coolest 71-year-old I know. She teaches the bi-monthly class in Ainu embroidery, and I love her for her quick wit, candor, and bright sunshine-y energy. Unlike most folks I’ve met in Japan, she gives people hugs and double-handed handshakes without hesitation. She helps us stitch and design our work […]

Here my son and I partake in the saved birthday cake (we got there late). As an example of Fuchi’s super-big heart, she made sure we both had a strawberry and wishes to make, and then, for some reason, she put the pink chocolate heart on my slice. Now ain’t she a sweetie? Love live […]

Son and I took our first hat-less jaunt down the more-or-less melted sidewalks last week in an east-side neighborhood. The crisp view of the Daisetsu mountains is here for your viewing pleasure. This mountain range is called the Playground of the Gods (Kamui no Mintar) by the Ainu.

Last week I spent three days at the foot of Daisetsu-san, the highest mountain in Hokkaido, for an intensive English learning camp with some of our students. One afternoon during a break I trekked up the road, passing only the occasional cross-country skiier. The snow began to fall in thick flakes, coating every adhesive part […]

T. composed a 6-minute song all by himself two days ago. It is his first independently composed song, though he has sung backup on other songs of my husband’s. A friend emailed me some info on throat-singers from Tuva (an independent area in the Tunna Mountains of southern Siberia and northwestern Mongolia) today, and reading […]

(Wikipedia. Copyright from creative commons, but link’s dead!) Snow falling, falling on the fields, the trees, the streets, on the sculpture of a nude woman in bolero hat. Her hat transformed into a dramatic puff of a Russian Silver Fox hat, her melting blue copper limbs lined above with the white fur of fresh snow. […]

Cleaning the floor at school and making ink paintings.

Some pics I got back from my son’s school. Now he’s on break until April! One is of mochi making day, the other of lunchtime.

If you grew up in snow country, you probably recall how lovely it feels when you are bundled up from head to toe in a snowsuit and you lie back into deep snow. The muffled crunch of snow settling underneath your weight, the snow cradles against your frame. When you look up into a pure […]

One of the joys of having a child to play with is reliving the simple things we also did as children. My son loves to eat snow. He doesn’t care if it’s from the road or from the field–and that’s a issue we struggle with–but still I remember how good it feels to munch on […]

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 […]

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

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.