The cold left (mostly) my head and throat to crouch heavily on my chest. I woke up just long enough to realize that I felt worse than the day before, make arrangements for other people to perform my functions at school, and phone Hamana-sensei to let him know that I wouldn’t be in. Then I went back to bed. Read the rest of this entry »
That ominous sore throat was a furious pain when I woke up. My nose was stuffed and my head fogged. I sadly informed Szymon that I wouldn’t be able to go to watch his iaidō (a sword-based martial art) match, and I spent the day in bed. Read the rest of this entry »
Very warm, very humid. Flat and grey. I woke at 7:00 and felt I couldn’t sleep any more at the moment, so I started scrubbing the linoleum in the common area of the floor, which hasn’t been cleaned since we moved in. Tanawat heard me and emerged with a scrub brush of his own to help me finish the job. Periodically I’d duck back into my apartment to get clean water. Stepping into the air conditioning always felt like magic. Read the rest of this entry »
I don’t know whether I just didn’t notice this before or whether it takes warm, wet weather to bring it out, but the 50 year-old Chadō Kaikan building where we hold our practice chaji smells like the cottage in Sawyer, Michigan where the Boydstons spent many happy, lazy, summer vacation days. No beach within walking distance here, though. And no laziness. Read the rest of this entry »
That’s more like it. Near the end of a dark, muggy day, the skies opened up and dumped several hours of the first respectable rain of the rainy season on us. But first: Read the rest of this entry »
True to my intentions, I jumped on the bike this morning and sped over–no, hold on. I didn’t speed anywhere. The bike is far too small for me; one reason it’s not a very good way to get exercise. Since my route was almost entirely uphill, I had to ride most of it standing on the pedals. So the big gaijin on the little Japanese bike pushed his way slowly over to the Gateway to Faerie in the hills to the west. Read the rest of this entry »
A couple of weeks back, the sage meteorologists officially declared an early start to the rainy season. It has rained almost not at all since. Read the rest of this entry »
I meant to get up early, and get up early I did. I need exercise in a bad way, and the gym is priced out of reach for the moment; plus, walking has been recommended to me for my knees’ sake. The only thing about a good walk is that it takes time, which means, if I can manage to discipline myself, early to bed and early to rise from here on out. Read the rest of this entry »
My friend Yūki is in town. Or back in town; he was and is again a student at Kyoto University, but he spent a year studying at the University of Hawaii, where I met him in a linguistics class. Read the rest of this entry »
You’ll be shocked to learn that every once in a while I actually go in for Culture. At Sean’s timely suggestion, I rode with him and Tanawat down to the nearby Raku museum to catch the second-to-last day of an exhibition featuring one tea bowl from each of the 15 generations of Raku masters. Read the rest of this entry »