a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • Lost and Found

    Today was a chance to visit temples the tourists throng to, like Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Temple, and Ryoan-ji, the temple known all over the world for its rock garden.

    At Ninnan-ji the gardens, art, and cherries and plums were breathtaking.


    After leaving Ninnan-ji, we took a taxi to Hanazono (Flower Garden) station, and took the train to Kyoto station for lunch and more sightseeing. It was when we left the restaurant in a department store that I realized I didn’t have my phone, which I have in a wallet case, was missing. The lost and found of the department store did not have it, and they suggested we go the police box in Kyoto train station.

    Neighborhood police boxes are a familiar fixture in neighborhoods all over Japan. You are never far from a police box in Japan. The friendly police took all the details of my phone-wallet, and called the details into the Kyoto police’s central lost and found. It hadn’t been much more than an hour that it was lost, and already the police’s central lost and found had a report of a similar wallet-phone having been turned into the police box near Hanazone train station. We went back to Hanazone, visited the police box there, and retrieved my wallet-phone. All I had to do was unlock the phone to prove it was mine. The police also knew by my face that I was the one on the driver’s license in the wallet.

    Evidently the wallet-phone had fallen out of my jacket pocket in the taxi because the taxi driver had turned it in to the police at Hanazone.

    How many countries have a system of lost and found items where an item can be turned into the police in one neighborhood in a city and shortly thereafter any police in the city can check to see if a similar item has been turned in? Somethings can only happen in Japan.

  • You Can Go Home

    Every so often I need to take a break and go back to where I grew up. It is the height of cherry blossom season in Japan, and the castle grounds of Kanazawa are swathed in clouds of cherry blossoms.

    The Japan of my youth is no longer there. Like ever place else, it has moved on. A striking difference, even from seven years ago, are the number of foreign tourists. Even in Kanazawa, the crowds viewing the cherry blossoms are from everywhere; China, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Italy, Spain, Germany, England, and on and on, even Bow.

    Among the crowds visiting Kenroku-en, an expansive Japanese park next to the castle grounds, were young people decked all out, dressed as comic characters. It makes you wonder if this is the future of fashion. Will our mundane everyday wear change to such delightful fashion? I’m trying to picture myself digging potatoes dressed out like this.


    Walking the quiet streets of Kanazawa’s old residential streets, is a calming, almost meditative experience.


    It also comes with its amusing moments. What the owners meant to say is that their apartment is by the river side, but it would be worth renting a room here to write home that you now live in the “Liver Side” apartments.

  • What the Spring Sun Brings


    The spring sun shines a light on garden art, a shallot carved into an exquisite piece. Nature has a way of turning anything into a museum piece if you leave it alone long enough.


    The spring sun brings a bumble bee to life. Fresh out of the cold ground, it rests on the back porch, soaking in the sun, before she flies off to start her colony. Hopefully, she found a nest site on this sunny day and is snug tonight in her new home, dreaming of all the children she will have.


    The spring sun brings a cat on my chest when I stretch out to enjoy the warm, sunny day. The spring sun, source of life and happiness.

  • Winter is But a Memory


    Winter is but a memory now with tulips pushing their flower buds high, cherries in bloom, indian plums dangling their slender white flowers, plums spreading their pink petals wide for the bees, bleeding hearts carpeting the forest floor with green lace, and ferns waking up, their heads bending slowly upwards.

    The bleeding hearts which cover much of the forest floor here are the pink flowered Lamprocapnos spectabilis, a flower native to Siberia, northern China, Korea, and Japan. It is the only species in the genus Lamprocapnos. It is so well spread here that you’d think it had always been here.

    The Indian Plum, Oemleria cerasiformis is a native plant here, growing from Santa Barbara in California, up the Pacific coast of America into British Columbia. It too is a sole species in its genus, Oemleria. Fifty-seven genera of plants have 500 or more species, with Astragalus (milk-vetches) having 3,270 species.







  • It’s Not Only Flowers That Bloom


    The cherry blossoms are opening, and as they open they sing for the bumblebees to come. I saw my first bumblebee of the season today. By the weekend the cherry blossoms should be buzzing with bumblebees.


    The cherry tree is not the only thing in bloom, Russel, the rooster is always in bloom. His comb with three ridges is a blazing red peony. I wonder if any of the chicks he sires will have peony combs. Maybe I’ll have a flock of peony headed chickens.