So yesterday I took a walk with Choco. Just like I do everyday twice a day. We have had some torrential rains and my schedule gets a little messed up (even Choco doesn't want to go out in the rain!) but yesterday afternoon it cleared enough for us to wander around the rice and corn fields. How about some green Japanese scenery?
I am often amazed at the number of different shades of green that can be seen just a few steps beyond my house. So refreshing to the eye! And the mist rising from the mountains and hills surrounding us look like someone took an eraser to the sky. In the distance there is a pig farm and a dairy farm and just before that some farmer's family grave. It occurs to me that this is a common sight all over Japan that one doesn't see in America at least. Behind a house or on a street corner, or like this, in between the fields there will be a few graves sticking up. They are part of the scenery and don't seem especially grim or scary.
This week has been the week of Obon when the spirits of the ancestors are supposed to come back to their home for the week thus all the relatives gather to visit the grave together and celebrate. The house is cleaned to welcome spirits (and others) and special food is cooked. It is actually sort of a happy time for the family and around here, if the day is nice a simple lunch of rice balls may be taken to the cemetery and the family will enjoy a picnic and the verdure of summer.
And I took a similar green picture last year too but I wanted to show you again the beautiful flooded lotus field with the huge green leaves and pink and white flowers sticking up from between them. How I love the Japanese scenery!
13 comments:
Green, in abundance! Lovely photos. especially the last one. That reminds me: one time someone told me that all greens go together, because God gave them permission to do so. How true!
The photos are beautiful. I love the mountain view and lotus are spectacular. Indeed, the greens are perfect because they are a work of our creator. Enjoyed your post today.
These are such beautiful greens, and you have quite an artistic eye to notice them and photograph them so artfully.
In North Carolina there are little graveyards like that all over the place. I guess lots of family farms had family cemetery plots. They appear in farmers fields, I've seen them carefully fenced off and surrounded by new subdivisions, and even on odd corners "in town". Their histories must be interesting.
Beautiful photos Tanya. I may be kind of strange but I love graveyards - I always walk through them when I come across one during my travels.
Lovely photos. With scenery like that it is easy to understand why the Japanese appreciate beauty in so many areas of their life. There are very few family cemeteries in the UK but graveyards are a real feature of every village and town. One of my favourite walks takes me through our local cemetery. I love to read the gravestones and speculate on the lives of the people.
I am so grateful that I "discovered" your blog today. My daughter spent 6 years in Japan in view of Sakurajima and I came to love the country through her. Your photos and stories brought back lots of good memories for me, and I will be visiting here often. Her Japanese cat, Shizuku, still lives with me. Thank you!
These are beautiful photos of the scenery, it is lovely to see where you live. I love the lotus field.
Thanks for sharing the extraordinary beauty that surrounds you.
absolutely gorgeous and even more amazing is that you live so close to all of that. these looks like holiday photos, but they're not. wonderful.
stop spluttering your germs all over people to get selvedge...........lol........we know you are addicted to that stuff......please to hear you are on the mend.........and back about blogland........
OMG wrong comment for the wrong blog.........sorry can you delete it????
love the last photo of the lotus photo..........
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