In a murky pond a stone sculpture of a grand ship with a proud, emblazoned sail appeared to float upon the water, with its portly dwarfish crew captained by a stout samurai.
Tag: Travel
Chapter Fifteen: Summer Festival Part One
Being alone, I stood to the side and took some photographs, but my alabaster skin betrayed my clandestinity and a couple of merry folk gave me high-fives.
Chapter Fourteen: Totoro Woods, Monkeys and Death Roads
On one of these many colourful cartographies I had found something called the ‘Totoro Forest.’
Chapter Thirteen: Speech Contest
What is there to fight for? Everything! Life itself, isn’t that enough? To be lived, suffered, enjoyed!
Chapter Twelve: Time Slip
Received wisdom about bear encounters conflictingly suggests running, standing one’s ground, or playing dead; a selection that seems fatally incompatible.
Chapter Eleven: Kitakata
Mountains are quite often used to connote that which is fixed and enduring, but in reality there are few things more changeable than the mountains.
Chapter Ten: Jennie Wren’s Nest
Once in the wake of a contact lens delivery I came back to find a thin cardboard parcel sticking out of my door like someone trying to eat a pizza box from the corner.
Chapter Nine: Gut Reaction
Thanks to simplified biological diagrams, a lack of experience of in situ viscera, and a general naivety, I had previously thought of the oesophagus as a clear drop to the stomach, like a stone well to some distant cavern below. It wasn’t until an unwelcome object needed to make the journey through my digestion that I came to realise how ludicrous this image was.
Chapter Eight: Elementary
One day Nakano-sensei asked which of the elementary schools is my favourite, and it’s possible that I answered a little too quickly with “Matsuyama.”
Chapter Seven: Nichuu
‘Language barrier’ is a phrase well-worn to the point of being threadbare, but it is not until one has experienced the communicative rampart that the barrier in question seems less like a linguistic picket fence and more of a socially impenetrable stone barrack.
