• Daily Life

    Forget Tiptoeing thru Tulips and Plod thru Paddies

    Normally, we’d be smack-bang in the middle of the rainy season by now (and we are, officially), but the skies have held off for the past few days, providing great cycling weather which has made for some wonderful rides, including this morning’s through the rice paddies of outer suburban Tokyo. May seemed a little cooler and damper than usual this year, and all sorts of appointments meant I wasn’t able to ride as much as I would have liked. June is a hard month for cycling as there is so much rain. I have pretty much given up on riding…

  • Daily Life

    Satoyama

    For the past few years, I’ve been very fortunate to live adjacent to (and, more recently, nearby) a satoyama, a little strip of near-wilderness amid the hustle and bustle of suburban and metropolitan areas. Tokyo is the world’s largest city and it is densely populated. Much of the city is industrialized, but frequently there are little havens of almost untamed natural woodland or small-lot farms. I used to go for walks in the farmland near our previous home and loved the serenity. I could walk through pristine forests just a couple of minutes’ drive from bustling highways and densely packed…