japan

Oh I wish (kind of). Just more armchair travelling, well, the Japanese garden in the Arboretum which is a few blocks from where we live. Yes, those conifers in the background of the picture below are a bit of a giveaway.

I have actually been to Japan three times - for a nine-month stint in the year after I finished high school and two trips bookending my first trip to Europe. That first nine-month trip was just long enough to teach me how unutterably unknowable Japan was to a tall, fair foreigner with size 9.5 feet. A dear friend who was there a bit longer than I (and at a different stage of her life, married to a Japanese man) recently said it was only after a year that she started to feel like she could have, I don't think fitted in but become more part of the culture.

And of course it is only more recently that I have become interested in Japanese craft books. Another friend's mother is currently in Japan for three weeks and we have passed on all sorts of department store names and fabric shop details to her. I also recently borrowed a couple of books about zakka (which I take to mean household goods) from the library and it (almost) makes my feet itch a bit.

It is certainly getting colder here in Seattle, so unfortunately the ornamental carp have already gone into hibernation and there is no more fish feeding. We must go back in summer when it is spectacular to see them roiling around in the water in a feeding frenzy.