OBACHAN'S SCRIBBLES

I've been busy lately, and talking/emailing to someone who is younger than my parents almost every day. But it has been much more stressful than I had thought. I'll tell you more details soon.

BTW, these are the photos I took yesterday afternoon (Oct 20, 2009). Rumor has it that a cloud like this (the one making a long, straight line across the sky) could be a predictor of an earthquake. I hope this cloud is not one...

Yesterday (October 15th) was a gorgeous autumn day. I spent all afternoon taking photos at our traditional autumn festival. The details of the festival are posted here and here, so I'm not going to repeat the explanation again. Instead, I'm making this post a sort of "photo gallery."

The photos in my previous posts about this festival were taken to explain our tradition. But this time I took photos to vividly capture the atmosphere.
Gentle breeze playing with kids hair in autumn sunshine ...
Breathtaking red color of the costume against the sun ...
The smell of the salty ocean water that wet the miniature shrine and the young men's costume ...

... I did my best, but these photos are not conveying the real beauty of the scenery. Everything was much, much more beautiful that day. I wish you were actually there to see our festival!
*Click photos to enlarge. Larger photos are more impressive. I promise.

＊写真に写っている方で掲載をやめてほしい方、またはここにある写真がほしい方は、kokopelli_sa88 at hotmail dot com までメールでご連絡下さい。












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Typhoon Melor is coming.

Mom and I went to my aunt's house and closed all the rain shutters there. Dad picked most of the early oranges yesterday, and closed up all the doors and windows of the barns and garages this morning. After lunch today, I took down the laundry poles and took in all the hangers.

It's definitely getting windier, but strangely enough, the waves are not as rough as it should be with a strong typhoon like this one; The ocean was much more stormy when a weaker typhoon passed far offshore last month. I don't know if this is a good sign or a bad one...

Dad is worried about the winter vegetables that sprouted only a few weeks ago. He doesn't expect them to survive this typhoon and he is already planning to start all over again. Mom is joking about the freeze-dried food in the emergency bag being expired. Evacuation -- Gee... I don't even want to think about it. I never want to go outside in the storm with my old parents.

When I was a kid, I got so excited when a typhoon was coming, and wanted to evacuate so badly. I almost looked forward to the power outage, because the idea of eating meals in candle light was so thrilling. Now I'm old and need no excitement of that kind. But I keep watching the typhoon information on TV-- I never get tired of it.

As I mentioned on my foodblog, I got a job offer from the local city office, which was helping with the language while the city office staff gave visitors from abroad a tour in town. The visitors came from September 27th to 29th, and we -- at least I -- had a great time! :D Not just because it was my rare chance to talk with someone other than my parents, but because the visitors were such nice people! So cheerful, energetic, kind-hearted, humorous and full of curiosity... They were exactly the kind of tourists you want to have if you are a tour guide.
The visit was another Geopark-related thing, and those visitors were from a geopark abroad. These photos show some of the places we visited in the three days (but the photos were actually taken a few weeks ago. The weather was almost stormy during the tour and we got soaked wet while walking along the trail). But the nice visitors didn't mind the rain. They were so patient with our lack of preparation and poor language ability, and they taught us a lot about our rocks and plants from their expertise.





Oh it was such an exciting experience. Now I'm suffering from slight burnout and separation anxiety...

I wish I could have a job offer like this once in a while. :)