komorebi
Recently, my sister watched Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days as a birthday treat. Now I want to watch it.
Trailer:
https://youtu.be/HTgWYojq-z8?si=MSQurQyT2aJrfcRO
Her enthusiasm for the Koji Yakusho character’s attitude to life, work and leisure is infectious. One of his great pleasures, like mine is photography. A recurring theme of his pictures is ‘komorebi’, or the filtering of sunlight through branches and leaves.
The word is formed from a compound of the words for tree 木, leak 漏れ, and sun 日. Inspired, I took a walk in the park.
Golden Week
The Golden Week holiday starts next week. We’ll take a break from Tuesday. Traditionally it’s the time when farmers fill their fields with water, here pumped from an adjoining river. This is in readiness for planting rice seedlings. I recently watched a farmer flattening the border of the field to make it water tight. A week or so later and these sweet purple flowers blossomed where his tractor/paddle had been at work.
Showing off
On my way to class this morning I passed a Camellia bush and snapped this beauty.
100 decibels
My watch, which quietly monitors these things warned me this morning that if I remained in a 100db environment for more than 30 minutes I could damage my hearing. Looking at the timeline it appeared to coincide with a game of Pin the carrot on the snowman at a local kindergarten yesterday afternoon. Even though there were only eight in the class the children got very excited!
Staff should be issued with earplugs. Shall raise the matter with management at the first opportunity.
A chip off the old block
Kairakuen park was looking absolutely beautiful this morning. After an overcast start the sun appeared and lit up the autumnal colors. I took these photos of the Tarou Cedar which is about 800 years old. Next to it is a natural spring which pumps out 100 tons of water per day! Elsewhere, a delicate sapling caught my eye as did the maple leaves and a thatched gate way.
-So lucky to have this within walking distance of home.
Mono-crowm
Great to be able to grab my (phone) camera and record this crow taking off as I started my morning walk today. It had been perching on a fence and naturally took flight (and fright) as I approached.
Processing the photo prompted me to collect other favorites from 2023 and post them here:
www.flickr.com/people/wilpercy/
第８回水戸黄門漫遊マラソン
On Sunday I spent several hours taking photographs of the 8th Mito Komon Manyu Marathon.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wilpercy/albums
Runners lap Lake Senba.
Fireworks!
Last night, after a four year hiatus due to Covid 19, Mito’s summer festive season kicked off with the welcome return of the Lake Senba fireworks display. 5,000 fireworks lit up the city skyline during a 60 minute display. The weather was hot and clear as it has been for some weeks. We watched from our balcony avoiding the crowds who thronged lake side viewing spots or paid to sit at tables and chairs set up for the occasion. Thank you. It was great!
And next weekend we have the Komon Parade to look forward to.
第56回茨城県ダンススポーツ競技大会
A few weeks ago I was walking near the Lily Arena in Aoyagi Park to the west of Mito city centre. Quite by chance, and having heard music through the open doors of the sports hall, I went in to see what was going on. It was the 56th Ibaraki Dance Sports contest. I stayed for about four hours admiring the grace and skill of the couples, their colorful costumes and enthusiasm. I took a lot of photos but as I wasn’t an official photographer and don’t have explicit permission to publish images I must protect the identity of the dancers. If anyone objects to appearing in this way, or would like to contact me about getting copies please use the link in the footer below.
I hope to attend the association’s next event in Migawa on September 17th.
Update: Yesterday’s event in Migawa was cancelled or postponed or something. Anyway there were no dancers when I turned up at 9.30. What a shame.
