After an Indian summer and unseasonably warm autumn, this morning finally sent a message that winter is on its way, even as the warm weather grevillea in Kangaeroo Corner continued to thrive. We have three grevillea trees in the garden, all of which are fantastic growers. (And a fourth, ground-covering, grevillea that has also done well this year.) Only one of them has ever flowered, though. But, oh how well it has bloomed! The star of our garden began shooting flowers in about April and has not stopped. It currently has about eight buds ready to flower. The onset of…
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Blessed with a bit of time and being in close proximity, I used the beautiful weather to visit Tama Zoological Park, testing a new Nikon Z 50 camera. I first visited this zoo in 1993, at a time when the memory of the 1984 arrival of koalas was still fresh. Koalas were flavor of the month in Japan at the time, literally so in the case of Koala no March–a confectionary that remains popular to this day–and the zoo’s Australian Habitat was something of a showcase area. Now, it’s just one of many habitats in what is a delightful little…
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Autumn is a delightful time for cycling, and unfortunately for running, too, which means almost daily encounters with one of my least favorite Japanese words: jama. Jama, 邪魔, literally translates as “evil magic,” but means something like hinderance, impedance, or, as I prefer, bloody nuisance. Autumn brings out all the joggers onto the Tama Cycling Road and, despite a perfectly good path below the levy on which the track for cyclists has been made, runners take over the path. They’d be fine if they kept to the rules and ran to the edges of the path, but rare is the…
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Nature conjured up a mystical morning as the warm air over the icy Tama River created a fabulous world of mist. It’s common around this time of year to have mist over the river. The effect creates a surrealistic atmosphere. It’s difficult cycling as visibility is greatly reduced, and my eyesight is already too poor for pre-dawn riding. But the upside of that is being presented with the opportunity to slowly pedal through the fantastic scenery. And the cold, dark early hour of my rides means that I pretty much get to have the sight to myself. Moments like this…
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We’re facing possibly one of the greatest calamities imaginable in a modern society outside of a natural disaster: our washlet is broken! On a bleak, cold and dark morning, I struggled to drag myself out of bed, but my rumbling bowels made it easier. I was horrified, though, to find that I couldn’t get the comforting spray between my cheeks that I have become accustomed to after bombing the bowl following decades of life in Japan. Hoping that it was nothing more than a mere glitch, I removed the washlet’s power plug and headed out on a ride, praying that…
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Don’t be fooled: This post has absolutely nothing to do with birthdays. It’s about doing things again for the first time in a while. The whole day was a series of events reminding me of the past. We started by cleaning the estate garden. We live in what is basically a retirement village that has cheap management fees, and they’re cheap because residents have to keep the common gardens and grounds maintained. When the cleaning was over, it was back on the bike. And I was back with a camera bag on my back for the first time in many…
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I got to make a flying visit to the “Bird” exhibition held at the National Museum of Nature and Science. The exhibition traced birds’ roles in ecosystems, dating from their evolution from dinosaurs through to the important roles they play today. There were over 600 bird specimins exhibited, divided into displays based on themes largely decided by avian type. The exibition boasted of providing a new look at birds through a genetic analysis. These were some of the aspects of the exhibition that were good to like. Other areas were not so great. Despite being a weekday and the entrance…
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The cycling gods have been active through 2024. Like all the gods of ancient times, there have been plenty of trials and tribulations and (so far) a happy ending. It’s no secret the period from about October 2021 to July 2024 was one of the most testing periods of my life, and riding my bike was probably the prime way I dealt with life experiences I couldn’t otherwise handle. Life conspired to drastically curtail my cyling this year. I’ve been sick, old, looked after dogs, had a faulty bike, struggled through a grueling bike build, lost cameras, crashed, and been…
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A kangaroo in a space suit saves the world in the most amazing Chinese movie, which I have just learned about. King Kong Roo is one of the heroes in Moon Man, the delightfully hilarious 2022 movie about Yue, a guy stranded on the moon with humanity apparently obliterated by an asteroid shower slamming into the planet. King Kong Roo is a kangaroo that had been left in a moon base research lab. He forms an unlikely friendship with Yue and they strive to return to the earth. The kangaroo ends up a hero, reverred around the world. The film…
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Way back in the early 1980s, Australia went from barely being a blip on the average Japanese radar to capturing the nation’s attention thanks to the frill-necked lizard, an endemic Australian reptile that uses its frill to threaten or frighten off predators. The lizard was featured in a March 1984 episode of Waku Waku Dobutsu Land (Exciting Animal Land), a popular TV show in those days when limited information meant news spread more broadly than now. The program offered a frill-necked lizard plush toy to six lucky viewers drawn from a lottery. More than 700,000 entries were received. Then, Mitsubishi…