the Space to Make


Beginning. How to begin.  Making, drawing, playing are crucial for my survival.  I attempt to chisel a nook in each day, a tiny capsule cave to crawl inside of and play. To be without a space for expression, for even a week creates a blockage. A toxic sewage build up that implodes in various guises unrelated. If too much time passes without visiting that cave, going back there is scary. Picking up a brush, a tool, an instrument is no longer natural and freeing, but brimful of pressure and fear. A friend shared this and it is a helpful mantra in moments of creative vulnerability.  




Golden Week Gold










May in Japan is beautiful. Warm Spring light tempts tentative sea dips. Pink petal Don Taku bonnets  are seasonal celebrations. Golden Week brought Shrine wonderings, Soba devouring, Mountain meanderings, Onsen indulging, horizon thinking, parasol protecting Kyushu magic. 

Waiting





It felt like waiting to be loved or waiting to fly home. But home was flying to me and so was love, so was blood. I took to the beach and practiced chords, waiting for her to come. 

April Unzen Steam














April always signifies a new year for me.  The warmth penetrates my winter skin, I shed my woollens, and migrate to every sunlit square of any room. In Japan April is the beginning of the academic year where families sport their Sunday best pastel shades to attend annual school enrolment ceremonies. Tiny, proud, uniformed children tentatively embark on the year ahead, hands clasped tightly on their way to the new.  

To mark Spring I headed South, to Unzen, to Jigoku (Hell's  Springs), to steaming volcanic mountains, to onsen tamago, to romantic hikes, to warm and wispy clouded skies. 

to be loved in spring


Some days I get overcome by the beauty in people.   In fact most days I feel that tenderness and I am raw to the touch.  I often find it too close to articulate and it's safer to be silent and just observe. I am very lucky to feel loved. I sometimes don't deserve such affection in people, yet I am grateful.












はなみ












さくらseason is here. Each day more blossom petals wink their hello to Spring. Cycling to the castle, past the lake, flying through the sakura lined streets, the cherry blossom halts all on their way to living. The awe puts on the brakes, widens the eyes, grows a smile, soaks the beauty. March light is magical here, as the sun sleeps later and later. Hawks picnic on hanami scraps. O sake flows and music pulses through Ohori Koen. The smells of sweet, sour, yakitori, okinomiyaki, motsu, taiyaki filter through the blossom branches, and are temptations to stay all night under the spotlit moonlight.

The Pinkness is present











Fukuoka's nature is gradually, gently, tilting its cheek from brown to pink. I am grateful for glimpses of tiny sakura buds winking from sparse branches as I fly past gardens, en route to the everyday. Japan's Winter presented so many culinary wonders. I will miss the abundance of nabe dinners under the warmth of the kotatsu, which make the evenings linger with the scent of delicious dashi and long thoughtful conversations.  

 March marks the end of the school year in Japan and the elation is palpable in the streets. Futons are being aired, I need one less layer of woollens in this little paper theatre house. The skies are immense and cloudless. The windows slide open and blow all of my cobwebs free and I have one more hour each evening to inspect the growth of the bulbs and saffron in the garden, nursing a cup of tea and my memories. With each new opening bud of a daffodil, I am reminded of home and that Spring brings with it the same sense of hope wherever in the world it arrives. It has been a long winter without you, but my hair is starting to smell like the wind again.  Welcome pinkness. 

February Light








It can be difficult to survive in this month. The outside otherness fails to tempt me from the heated pit   that numbs my need. Excuses to stay put dance around and side-step obligation. Heat patches appliquéd onto aching muscles or the promise of bird/people/insect watching accompanied by a hot chai can sometimes do the trick. But the indoor innerness of my yearning for warmth and togetherness mostly wins the battle of February. Stay dry and snug. Even the ducks are all head-tucked-tails.   

To Make is to Meditate








These cold bitter crisp days, lend themselves to being indoors, legs plummeted in the kotatsu, thermal, knit ware, scarf clad. Days of learning, hours of making. Friends full of generosity arrive and share their sushi and tempura skills, gathered from their foremothers, to be relished by generations of aspirating mothers. 

The hospitality of a Japanese sake brewer is like no other. Surprises sit opposite and see into souls through the bottom of empty o-sake glasses. They shine light onto loneliness and honeyed voices soothe the losses so obvious to no one but you.  Massaging rice at dawn, the warmth of sticky steamed nourishment shoots tingles to the heart. We sweat in the heat of fermentation, are chilled on the factory floor, sheltering from the rain. We stand rooted, awe-struck by the septuagenarian superman who climbs into the steamer in his shorts, shovelling the warmed rice into sunshine buckets.

In the bleak mid-winter, it's a selfish kind of love. These are heart swollen days, where the love inside cannot easily be expressed to the ones that deserve to feel it most. It is too cold for much. To my valentine: no sushi, no sake, but a dense dark chocolate cake in the making, with a side of welsh tapestry covered hot water bottle to make up for lost heat in these February winds. 

One month of local















The first month of this year.
Kyushu crisp January cobalt skies. 
The local ducks flock from green river to wispy clouds. 
A kettle of hawks impress. 
Power lines guide the lonely bicycle past futons airing,
pink pillows waving,
past pedigrees in earmuffs, with hoovering manes.
Parallel to power lines hypnotic, 
umbrella twirling joggers 
while 'mama charis' balance patiently at the lights. 
Slippers in sunlight, Shochu tasting, statues in scarves, stray cat affection, 
and a long awaited balmy Saturday dozing.

あけまして　おめでとう







Akemashite Omedetou ! Happy New Year. 

The year began without a headache, without regret, without nausea. Rose bouquets delivered by bus, dressed in ruby velvet boots to the open kimono clad arms of a family. Osechi and Ozouni, Sake and Ichigo, Kimono and Card games. Laughter was our lubricant, love lived around that beautifully laid table on the first day of the new year. 
We crossed a fairy lit bridge in Ohori park wrapped in green mohair to see the sun set and give thanks for knowing one another. We drank gin and sent videos across the world. We sang songs, requests and dedications at the top of our lungs until our voices were lost. We slept long and woke happy and well rested for two thousand and fourteen. 

A George Bailey heart.






There is a dose of George Bailey's spirit in my heart skipping through Bedford Falls in the snow. Clarence accompanies me, while I chose, wrap and post my love to the best of friends so far from here. I mull the wine, roast the gigantic chestnuts and steam them with rice while stirring the thick pudding and wishing for closeness. I woodcut print a hybrid Fuji-san Christmas pudding card, Japan-style, alongside my love. We blow the cobwebs from the handmade decorations, found in a boot box; choose a dead twig and dress it in paper globes, cat collar bells and cardboard stars. 







Red Poinsettia's frame each florists, showing off, vying to be scooped up and cycled home, to be installed in Christmas.  Artificial silver trees compete against the last of Autumn's golden glow, while neon pinkness overwhelms the tinniest eyes.  Jack frost isn't nipping noses, there's just a bitter hint of winter in the wind. Legs lined in thermals, palms warmed in palms, we keep our heat from the Kotatsu and dare each other to venture to the kitchen. We sip sencha and nibble imported dark chocolate while kanji characters dance in our minds. Christmas lives here in this tatami room, sandwiched between crisp seaside light and a whistling musical breeze.  May each day of the last of this year be full of warmth and love. 






Chasing the Koyo










The last of Autumn impresses it's beauty on me. My first Japanese koyo tattooed my on inner eyes, for each time I miss those leaves, I can return. The colours of these months are my most treasured.

**TATAMI SLIPPERS**




There is a place in which the Japan I have experienced so far lives. You are invited there, if you'd like to go. It took me a while to learn that slippers are not to be worn inside tatami rooms in Japan. Each day I am learning how to walk, in my own shoes, slippers and five-finger socks. 





Proud as Punch





My sister is magnificent. 
She will be demonstrating her wonder at a magical pop-up shop in Brighton next weekend with a special discount off her current jewellery collections. Beautiful, delicate, edgy, elegant. Go see. 

Nihon go o amari wakarimasen


 

Because I understand little Japanese, I search for conversations elsewhere. I mostly have the BBC to thank for saving me and indulging me in the spoken word of my mother tongue. Of all of the 'Terebi' I have seen here, I am left confused, irritated or nauseous with mindless gameshows, Japancentric news or eating related viewing. Ocassionaly, they make me laugh, but often by mistake, during a genuinely heartfelt tribute concert where the selection of singers can't hold a note or play a chord. It seems too isolating. So I retreat to the radio, my friend. My constant source of connection to my constant state of dislocation. Today, I lay ill due to a weekend overdose of outdoor 'onsen', dehydrated and dizzy, I discovered a gem.

 I was lulled in and out of thoughts and woven through memories by Marcel Proust's In search of lost time, evocatively adapted and exquisitely read on radio 4extra. A relief to feel fed by language in what can seem like days of word starvation. My Japanese ability is nearing that of a native two year old. I know this because I met one on Saturday and we conversed happily in mis-pronounced one-liners. We understood each other, which was novel. Though I am only a toddler in Japan, I still crave challenging and insightful immersion into language and discussion. For now the BBC is my gold. Do retreat for a day and soothe your ears to 6 hours of the richest, realist narrative beauty here.