I got a delightful start to the morning with a not-quite-chance encounter with a beautiful green pheasant near the Tama River. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been fortunate enough to cross tracks with pheasants in a few places. They’re beautiful birds, the males are at least, and I loved being able to catch a glimpse of them, sometimes up close. And being a photography aficionado, I was keen on getting a good shot. I’d tried with my mobile phone camera, but the photos weren’t much chop. They were grainy and out of focus, and it was hard to get…
Getting old is not much fun, nor, as the late, great thespian Bette Davis once famously said, it’s not for sissies. But I’ve becoming increasingly conscious of age over the past few weeks. My eyesight is going: quickly and rapidly. I’m seeing less in the dark and rain, vision is cloudy and peripheral vision untrustworthy. Arthritis in my hands is making even the most minor of tasks a tough one. And my professional life, such as it is, is slipping from disaster to disaster. All these things are adding up to fill me with fear and trepidation, which has become…
Today was simply magnificent: stunning weather, delightful companions, fantastic bikes and serious gutsing of ourselves. Bromptons ruled the day and it was the common connection between us. Mechanicals slowed down our start, but also opened new doors. Following a slowdown caused by a flat, we got to eat at Hugsy Doughnut and then later rode on for pies, cakes and cuppas at Punk Doily.
Despite the presence of kangaroos and their proclivity for jumping, there’s a bit too much shaking and bouncing going on in and around Tokyo, with dozens of earthquakes shaking their nearby Izu peninsula over the past week or so. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake that crushed large parts of Tokyo and Yokohama, killing over 100,000. And that quake was preceded by quakes in the same area that they’re happening now. Tokyo is overdue a natural disaster with earthquakes and volcanoes frequently smashing the metropolis every few decades in its roughly 4 1/4-century existence. (There…
Yesterday, I got to experience a wonderful event called Enter the Void. All sorts of talented people gathered for the event in Ueno, Tokyo. We met a saw demonstrations of some highly talented people’s works, heard their views on technology and art and spent a fun and enjoyable day. For me, personally, it was an eye-opener. I’m neither tech savvy or particularly artistic, so it wasn’t an event designed for the likes of me in mind. Other participants were, for the most part, heavily involved in art and tech. As a result, I got to see things that an earlier…
Kangaeroo.com is back online after a few weeks of being grounded. There were myriad reasons for why nothing got posted. But an old friend from NewsonJapan played an important and much appreciated role in getting the site back on track. Other everyday items making comebacks of sorts include my spare tire, career failure, glorious May weather and, beyond all hope, one of the kangaroo paw in Kangaeroo Corner! I’d given up on ever seeing the much-adored flower making a return, so it was a sheer delight to see it bud again. Less pleasing from a gardening viewpoint was the general…
Possibly the most meaningful part of my Australian seeds experiment arose today when I transplanted my kangaroo paw seedlings. The great experiment, which I expected would result in me proving to have a green thumb and presenting all my gardening mates with exotic plants has proven only that I am all thumbs. I’ve killed nearly everything I planted, even the everlasting daises and golden everlastings that appeared to be growing so well. I bumped them off by putting them in a hothouse on a boiling hot day, then giving too much fertilizer to the plants that survived. A desert pea…
