OBACHAN'S SCRIBBLES

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

I'LL BE BACK

Here we go. A new template! I’m going to stick with this for the rest of the month.
The flowers in the header are Japanese (or Chinese) bellflower, which is another traditional autumn flower in Japan.


gynkgo

I went for a walk in a nearby park this morning to take some photos that show the signs of autumn. Today’s high was supposed to be around 30℃, so I left home early so that I could walk around before it got too hot.

In the park, the leaves of ginkgo trees were getting ready to turn yellow, and the orange-colored nuts looked just beautiful with the blue sky as the background! It’s so hard to believe that those lovely nuts eventually start smelling terrible as they ripen. Anyway, I'm sure I'll be back when this park is filled with the offensive smell.

Another sign of autumn is the cluster-amaryllis. They are in full bloom now around here.

cluster-amaryllis

This flower always reminds me of the picture book I read in my childhood, “Gon-gitsune.” It’s a story about a mischievous little fox and a poor farmer. The fox named Gon stole the eel that the farmer caught to give to his sick mother. Soon the mother died. Gon found out about it and felt so guilty for steeling the nutritious food that could have saved her life. To make up for his mischief, he started leaving nuts and mushrooms to the farmer’s house when no one was around. One day the farmer found Gon leaving his house and thought the fox did something bad again. The farmer shot him, then found the nuts, and realized the kindness of the fox. Sad story, but one good thing is that they understood each other before one of them died.

In this story, the cluster-amaryllis was mentioned in the scene of the funeral of the farmer’s mother. Gon saw a group of people walking to the graveyard, and there were this burning-red flowers all the way along the path going through rice fields in a countryside. Maybe because of the memory of this story, cluster-amaryllis always makes me feel a little sad when I see them in early September every year.
posted by obachan, 9/15/2004 01:26:00 PM

2 Comments:

Hello.

You don't know me, but I'm a student of the japanese language. I was assigned to read the Gon-gitsune story, but I was having trouble with the language. However, your summary was able to help me organize my thoughts and complete what I needed to do. Thank you for writing this, without it I don't think I would've been able to finish it.
commented by Anonymous Anonymous, 12/09/2004 9:05 PM  
Hi
Welcome to my site! OMG, I never ever expected my Gon-gitsune summary could help someone in any way!! Thank you for letting me know about it. Good luck with your Japanese language study :)
commented by Blogger obachan, 12/09/2004 9:27 PM  

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