SEASON WELL

Last night was the AGM at our Japanese Society.  Afterwards we were treated to a display of flower arranging (ikebana) by a 2nd dan master of the Ohara school, which features highly seasonal arrangements.  There are up to 24 seasons in Japan, but because of the odd weather this year (it's still 11 degrees outside here), the main arrangement was winter/early spring ('risshun' in Japanese), which would in Japan be around the 4 February.

This is the main arrangement

A bit difficult to get a good shot with all the external noise, but I hope you can see it.  I think there are 10 different plants in the display.

 

As with other schools of ikebana, the containers are as important as the plants.  The Ohara style is what Westerners might call 'simple'.  But of course that's because it is easy for an expert to arrange.  Here is one which might be early March (when the insects wake up but the buds haven't burst).

And this is another which might in Japan be early January (before it gets really cold).

I have to say that it's nice to find so much colour in the present season which cheered us all up no end.

A BIT OFF

I seem to have played bridge almost every day this week.  Has made it difficult to get out into the garden and do some work (I haven't been very upset about not getting out there though and I don't think the jobs will go away, so I can do them later).

Yesterday though we also went to a talk about Japanese gardens.  It was a little disappointing.  He hadn't been to many interesting gardens (he didn't even cover the main gardens of Japan) and didn't have anything much to say about them anyway. 

The trouble with visiting places like Japan is that you end end up being side-tracked and fascinated by irrelevant things.  So we had a 10 minute explanation about the bullet train (with pics) and how lovely it was to travel on it, followed by another 10 min section about the ferry to Miyajima, with pics of that too!  Then some pics of meals and shop windows, several pics of Mount Fuji, umpteen pics of a temple gate ('this is a very famous gate and I expect you've all seen pics of it before'.  'Yes!!  So why are you showing us more??').  He even gave us a guided tour of the temples at Nikko.

One lady complained that the talk was all statistics.  Actually it sounded a bit like a Japan Travel Bureau guided tour for foreigners (they don't like you to leave without seeing all the 'sights' whatever you're supposed to be there for, and they always tell you about areas and heights, etc, so maybe that's what he was given and that's where he got his speech from).  So I don't know any more about the whys and wherefores of Japanese gardens.  But I can tell you that they are nice.

Tomorrow we are off to Teignmouth again for the annual Jazz Festival.  I'll no doubt have some pics and videos for you when I return.  Til then, be good.

NOSTALGIC

Here is nostalgia on so many levels.  The pic was taken only about 40 years ago, but it is taken in Japan, near where I used to live.  Oh, the remembrances of walking through this park and, by extension, of walks in the rest of Japan and indeed my life there.  The occasion photographed was the local cherry blossom festival, the celebration of the beautiful blossoms, of the transitory nature of beauty and of the end of winter.  How I long now for the end of winter and dream only of spring!  And of course, at this festival, one eats delicious thingies on sticks and with them one drinks sake.  How could I not be nostalgic for that?!  But also, there is something much older about this uniformed band, with its military style conductor and painted backdrop that reminds me of my childhood and days in the park back here with my parents, long gone.  Ah, such fond distant memories!

 

This is my contribution to this week's Picture Perfect.

WATCH OUT

I once went for a year without a watch.  My watch had broken and I was so fed up with it being wrong and having to keep adjusting it that I threw it away.  I was living in Japan at the time and everywhere I looked there was a clock or a TV with a time flashing in the corner or an announcement of the time.  So I decided to see whether I could manage without my own timepiece.  I don't think I ever missed it.

Later, I was involved with the opening of a new department store in Yokohama and, rather embarrassingly, was given a watch as a thank you gift.  It had 'Yokohama' written round the face and has lasted until now, 25 years later.

As it was a rather fashionable looking watch (apart perhaps from the engraved legend), I tended not to wear it for everyday use, preferring one I bought in Petersfield market for £5.  The cheap one has also done me proud, surviving endless perspiration, constant changes in temperature, the occasional submersion in a shower, one temporary disappearance in a compost heap, and innumerable falls onto hard surfaces.  But last week it decided it had had enough and stopped.  Even with a new battery.  It had anyway changed from seeming to be carved out of pure solid gold to something that looked as though it had recently sealed a pot of Marmite.  So I threw it away and started wearing my Yokohama watch full time.

I had to put a new battery into it before I came to Devon.  But every time I took the watch off, it stopped.  In the morning you could tell what time I went to sleep.  Not only that, but I started having to use a pair of pliers to pull out the winder in the morning and a small hammer to knock it in again.  I also had to take it off and shake it from time to time, when it appeared to be lagging.  It was becoming too much.  I took the watch off to shake it, while in town today, and the strap broke.  It was a sign.  I slipped it into a nearby litter bin.  Don't tell the people in Yokohama.

So I bought a new watch!  Clearly a £5 watch had not lasted forever as I had expected, so I splashed out on a £10 one.  It is shiny gold, has a crocodile type strap and has a French name written on it and everything.  'Is it French?' I asked.  'No, it comes from Manchester.  But the movement was made in Japan.'  So perhaps the Yokohama people won't mind too much after all.