Golden Week

   Today was the first day of a four day weekend, courtesy of Golden week. Many people travel, and some people even leave the country, but I didn't feel up for anything ambitious. So today, I went for a long walk around my town. I've driven around it enough that I was able to wander around and improvise without ever getting lost. Having a bunch of mountains strewn about to use as reference points is also helpful. 
 

   The weather these days is perfect: in the 60s during the day and the 40s at night. But soon the hot and humid Japanese summer will be coming, and I'll be sweating 24/7.
   Speaking of summer, apparently sleeveless shirts are considered racey for Japanese women to wear. Last weekend was really warm, but I only spotted one woman wearing a tank top. Also, fair skin is prized, and tanning is considered vulgar. So it's not uncommon to see women walking around with parasols or sun hats. There is, however, a subculture of young women who are really into tanning and over the top make up, known as "ganguro." I haven't seen any of them yet, though. It might be more of an urban thing.

   This spot reminded me of the scene in Totoro when Mei disappears and they find a little girl's shoe in a creek and think she may have drowned.  I wondered, before I came to Japan, if it would really look like something out of a Ghibli movie, or if that was a romanticized view of the countryside. I haven't been disappointed.

   This picture is pretty lame, but if you look in the gap between the two sets of buildings, you'll notice that one of those white blobs is a mountain, not a cloud. Those are the snow-capped mountains I mentioned before. Today was the first day in a while that I could see them again.
   A little further down the road, I passed by a group of grown men driving tiny remote-controlled cars through a miniature race course. They were all silently concentrating on what they were doing, and one of them was recording the race on his camera. 

   That big puddle is actually a rice field. Apparently now is the time of year everyone is filling up their rice paddies with water. Each field has a little faucet at one end, and I'm guessing the water is drawn from the countless creeks and streams that run through the town. I noticed that many of the fields also have a pipe that drains into the same streams. 
   I'm betting these huge rectangles of standing water are also excellent spawning grounds for mosquitos.

   Today I cleaned out my apartment and bought a little bookshelf at the second-hand store. It cost about $3. It's a little wobbly, but it's a cheerful green color. The man who sold it to me said, apologetically, "こんな状態で310円です。" "In the shape its in, it costs 310 yen." I assured him that I knew what I was getting myself into.