Seasonal - Somewhere in Japan

Dispatch № 98: Ode to the Kotatsu

A poem about my favorite piece of furniture

Dispatch № 80: The Old Life

In the winter months, kerosene trucks drive slowly through neighborhoods in the evening, making their presence known with a repeating announcement played over a loudspeaker, accompanied by the tune of an old children’s song.

Dispatch № 72: For a Limited Time

Soft stridulations waft like lithe wisps of wood smoke on the gentle evening breeze, the crickets calling tenderly under the waxing crescent moon.

Dispatch № 43: The Summer Trope

It is a season for the seaside and the mountain stream. A season for eating ice pops while walking over the blistering asphalt of country roads fringed with green foxtail, the green of which has begun to fade to brown.

Dispatch № 24: A Festival Built For Two

Last summer, they canceled all the local festivals because of the pestilence at large. Though vaccinations are happening now in Japan, it’s slow going, and I suspect summer festivals will fall victim to the plague for a second year.