Escape from Tokyo
Aug 13th, 2008 by Q
We fled the Tokyo heat around the 28th of July and aren’t planning to return until September 15th. This may be one of the last times that we can spend a large chunk of time at our house in Iwate, as the boy is starting school this April. So we’re planning to get as much out of this last year of freedom as we can.
Inevitably, being out here in the countryside makes me wonder if living in Tokyo is really a good choice. Being at the edge of a forested mountain brings a lot of wildlife, and the boy is having a great time of it. He’s caught and released a few frogs, collected a couple rhinoceros beetles, and now catches wild crickets to feed our leopard geckos.
We’re entering the Obon holiday, when the dead come back to visit us. Already a few strange events have begun. My mother-in-law had a dream-vision last night of a deceased family member and the boy was playing with a dead relative that he shouldn’t know about… Tonight we’ll go to my wife’s aunt’s house for dinner (and most likely a shochu drinkathon) and tomorrow extended family will be over here, and the drinking will begin at 11am.
The photo at the beginning of this post is from a “yomiya” or small local festival that usually prefaces a large seasonal festival, in this case Hanamaki Matsuri. The main festivities are around the 12th of September.
Remember how good a friend the forest was to us as children? Don’t you miss it when you’re not up in the north? I love every minute of it and I’m in the forests of Wisconsin practically every day with my job…
Hi Q,
Glad to see you’re enjoying the cooler climate and fresh air air up North.
For my own selfish reasons I’d like to strongly dissuade you from leaving Tokyo. We live in the neighbourhood (well, almost) and I still rarely see you!
Having said that, I can understand your thinking. Just last week-end I met my good friend Paul at the unagiya-san in Akabane and he was telling me about the menagerie his son has started. All the animals come from a wooded area near Paul’s home in Saitama. This got us talking about our own childhoods.
When I was 5 my parents bought their first house. Out of necessity, they bought it in a suburb of Toronto called Mississauga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississauga). Mississauga at the time was going through a period of rapid development. We moved there at the beginning of this period. There was a working farm across the street. A rooster crowed evey morning. Behind our house was a kennel. Farther up the road was a huge electrical field and next to that was another farm, this one abandoned, which made it even more fun.
Like Paul’s son, my brothers and I had a menagerie – in addition to the traditional pets: a dog, two cats, and 3 guinea pigs. At various times we had garter snakes, field mice, praying mantises, grasshoppers, beetles, caterpillars, pollywogs, leopard frogs, and toads. I learned a lot from these wonderful creatures – unfortunately my education often cost the animals their lives.
Ukima Koen has dragon flies, turtles, cicadas, ducks, seagulls, heron, cormorants and various fish – and it’s in Tokyo. So, there you go. Stay.
Cheers!
Nat,
Yeah, remember the Wolves Club? That was great fun out there in the Pheasant Branch Marsh every day. I wonder whatever happened to the Conroy brothers and other “evil high-schoolers.” They were pretty woodsy for punk rockers.
What job are you doing now that bring you out into the woods every day???
Michael!
Thanks! It’s nice to be wanted around! Don’t worry, we can’t even think above moving anywhere for the next two years for reasons that you know. You’re right, there are a fair amount of creatures to be caught, and studied/killed right there in the park. As much as I love it up here, I’d probably start itching to be a larger population center if I lived here full time. If we did ever contemplate moving a few years down the road it would more likely be to a decent-sized city like Sendai.