Day in the Life of an Idiot

Image: May Basket in a tea cup.

Sunday was Beltane (and/or May Day for you international Workers of the world,) and so Shawn and I celebrated by having a couple of friends over for tea. Tea in this case actually being more of a dinner, as it was a early midday meal that was actually fairly large... although it was made up of nibble-ly, finger foods, so lunch? Regardless of what it was called, it was an absolutely amazing time shared with Haddayr C-W and naomikritzer

We sent them both home with "May Basket" teacups, seen above. (Yes, they got to keep the cups. We picked them up thrifting on Saturday, just for this purpose.)

I took a ton of pictures, but all I really want to say about it was that the watercress and egg sandwiches are surprisingly good, it was not as much hassle as I thought it might be to go largely gluten free, and I was really bummed that I could not adequately make Beltane wreathes or fill the May baskets with flowers blooming in our garden BECAUSE NO FLOWERS ARE BLOOMING YET IN THIS HIDEOUS WEATHER.

I mean, seriously, it looks like early April out there in my yard. Only a few crocuses and brave snowdrops have poked up out of the frozen ground to bloom. 

Otherwise, since it is Monday, I thought I would show off the much nicer (though also rainy) weather in Japan. My first trip this last week was with Erika and we went to Ashikaga Flower Park in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. We were actually here before, in the winter, to see a light show. (https://lydamorehouse.dreamwidth.org/597654.html.)  It's quite a bit different, as you might imagine, in late April.


Wisteria at the flower park in Japan.

It was drizzling a bit this day, which is why there are not a lot of other tourists in these shots. Also, of course, in order to make these live tours even vaguely available for North American tourists, the tour guides often have to be early birds. I think this tour happened around my 5 pm, but it was her 8 am (the next day.)


Brilliant red, pink, and white azaleas against a stormy sky.

We used to have an azalea bush in our front yard and I kind of miss it. I was not good at taking care of it and it was in a very difficult spot to keep well watered. Perhaps I'll try again, because looking at these makes me really miss how brilliant these bushes can be in the early spring. 

I could fill this post with pictures of the pretty flowers and the famous wisteria tree, but I feel slightly compelled to show you the more unusual sites. I will say that I have realized with these HeyGo tours that I am much more fond than I would have thought of strolling through random, out of the way gardens. Perhaps because I am not on any kind of schedule. I suspect that if I were actually paying to travel to Japan right now, I would be desperately trying to chose what to go see and a lot of these odd, quiet, out-of-the way places would not make the list. I honestly think that this is the strongest case for HeyGo. It's a great way to "travel" to the places you would never make time for if you only had two weeks (or however long) to spend in Japan.

So, in keeping with the theme of "places I would probably never put on an itinerary," I next visited Tomonoura in the Hiroshima Prefecture with Toshi.


View from inside the temple...

For anime fans, apparently the town of Tomonoura was an inspiration for Miyazaki's Ponyo.  The Wolverine with Hugh Jackman was also filmed here.  It is a quaint little port town that I would probably never visit in a million years. There is an old lighthouse there and an amazing hillside shrine with a cemetery I would have loved Toshi to explore more, but we were already over time at that point.

The only other picture that I want to share from this HeyGo was the picture of the suge-dama outside of the sake brewery we passed in town. 


Image: an odd twiggy, brown ball hanging off of a second story awning.

I honestly live for information like this. So, the suge-dama (杉玉) is a ball of cedar branches that signals the freshness of the sake. Sake, though we refer to it as "rice wine" here in the West, is really more like beer. Most sake does need a maturation period of about a year, I guess, but the brewers will put out a green ball when the newest batch is ready/fresh for the season. This one is obviously past its prime. :-) Although, I found another article that suggests that the brown might be an indication that the sake is actually ready: https://sake-world.com/sugidama-sake-lore-of-olde-cryptomeria-balls/

At any rate, I found this little detail very fascinating. 

I went on another tour in hopes of another spectacular view, but the clouds conspired to rob us of a good picture of Mount Tsurugi from Himi City. (If you go to this site and scroll down to the second picture, that was what we were hoping for: https://www.snowmonkeyresorts.com/activities/tateyama-mountains-top-3-viewing-spots/)

Instead, the best we got was a close up of that little island:

Image: a cool little island in the sea.

So there's your weekly dose of Japan, if you are interested. I did not do any vintage lunch recipes today because I got caught up working on my novel instead.