• Daily Life

    Bird Brained

    November 24, 2024

    Dominated in our day-to-day lives by a delightful little dinosaur (one of their modern day descendants in the form of a rosy faced lovebird to be precise), Mrs. Kangaeroo and I decided to spend a rare shared day off by playing with birds. And our flying visit to Moff animal cafe in Tachikawa left us feeling chirpy after spending a couple of hours with our avian mates. Related posts: Arrows of Outrageous Fortune Strine Dictionary Strine （オージー英語）Dictionary Where’s the Whist Amid the Wisteria? Do Little Savorin’ Straya Beating Jobsworths with Luck Quick Cleanse Barking Mad at a Dog Marathon Dog’s…

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  • Daily Life

    Autumn Perfect For A Fall

    November 23, 2024

    Autumn is finally upon us, just days before its scheduled calendar end, but that doesn’t mean it’s still not ideal for a fall. And taking that literally, I decided to head out for a ride on the Death Machine, the nickname I give to my recumbent bicycle for its propensity to make cycling strenuous and dropping a doddle. I woke well before dawn, but my bravado withered with memories of riding in the dark, which is harder on the recumbent where you’re laying down and vision is always harder, even in the best of conditions. So, I waited until almost…

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  • Daily Life - Unknown Nichigo

    Tokyo’s Wonderfully Whirled With Aus

    November 22, 2024

    Walking around central Tokyo over a couple of days this week, I got to discover a pocket garden filled with Aussie plants, including blooming grevillea and kangaroo paw. This little circular garden created a wonderful whirled of Aus, right in the Marunouchi business district. Flowers weren’t the only wonderful sights of the city. Walking around gifted me plenty of wonderful sights to see. Related posts: Paws for Effect Paws and Reflect Get Your ‘Thinking’ Paws From Me, A Damned, Dirty Mate! AFL – Modern Australia’s Religion and Failed Proselytizing in Japan With 10 Thumbs, Odds Were Always For 1 Being…

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  • Daily Life

    Bloomin’ Freezing

    November 19, 2024

    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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  • Daily Life

    Jama on the Tama

    November 16, 2024

    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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    Mist-ical

    November 12, 2024

    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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  • Daily Life

    Crapper Crisis

    November 11, 2024

    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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    Many Happy Returns

    November 10, 2024

    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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    The Cycling Gods

    November 2, 2024

    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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  • Daily Life - Strine Strife

    Grant Me The Serenity

    September 27, 2024

    Damn, life has been so serene recently, I have literally had to pinch myself to tug my mind back to reality. A mate dragged me back into the real world fiercely and abruptly today. And that was because the mate died. It was not completely unexpected. Some might say it was God’s will. He had come close before. And had survived multiple bouts of cancer. Vexastiously, things had spiralled downward this year, though. And maybe even futher back. I realized that even though we had shared some of the most intimate details of our lives on an almost daily basis…

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