Author: Amajin

A Neighborhood Spared

Yanaka was little touched by the 1923 earthquake or war, so it remains a Tokyo neighborhood of small houses and unexpected twists and turns.

The Yanaka Ginza shopping street has intriguing little shops, street food, dogs, people and bikes all crammed together. Live Dog specializes in dog paraphernalia and the street has more dogs than we’ve seen anywhere else in Tokyo. There are, of course, a number of shops focused on cats. It’s one of those places you could poke around for hours. The people watching is fascinating.
 
 
There are quite a few Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines in Yanaka. We enjoyed the tranquility of this small temple.
Yanaka cemetery goes even further in the tranquil direction, if you don’t mind a bunch of crows speaking their universal language. The Tokugawa clan has a family plot where the last Shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, was buried in 1913.

 

Journey to Japan

Having risen early on a Thursday to start our journey, we approached Honshu island and Tokyo’s Narita airport directly into a fiery Friday sunset, advancing fourteen hours into the future.

The following day, we made our way to the Meiji-jingu Shrine in Tokyo for the Shichi-Go-San (7-5-3) festival. It’s held on the weekend closest to November 15 for parents to take their children to a Shinto shrine, offering thanks for their healthy growth. Picture taking was the order of the day. It looked to us as if total strangers were asking to have their pictures taken with the children being towed into the shrine. We loved the Crocs on the little girl, just above.
The Torii marks the boundary between the ordinary world and the sacred. The ones at this shrine were truly massive, as befits the dedication to Emperor Meiji (who is buried here along with Empress Shoken). The Shrine was built in 1920, just a few years after their deaths.

People wash their hands and rinse out their mouths before proceeding to the shrine for prayer.

Prayers can be offered with the help of ema or votive tablets.

Sake breweries offer barrels of sake every year in honor of Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken and their divine souls. Through the Meiji Restoration of imperial rule to Japan, the foundation for international trade and commerce was laid. It was a rapid transition from feudal to modern.
Weddings at the shrine are very popular. There is another procession every time you turn around. When a young man we were chatting with at the counter of a little rice bowl restaurant near our hotel learned of our visit to the Meiji-jingo Shrine, he told us about his parents’ wedding there 30 some years ago.

 

Journey to Japan

Having risen early on a Thursday to start our journey, we approached Honshu island and Tokyo’s Narita airport directly into a fiery Friday sunset, advancing fourteen hours into the future.

The following day, we made our way to the Meiji-jingu Shrine in Tokyo for the Shichi-Go-San (7-5-3) festival. It’s held on the weekend closest to November 15 for parents to take their children to a Shinto shrine, offering thanks for their healthy growth. Picture taking was the order of the day. It looked to us as if total strangers were asking to have their pictures taken with the children being towed into the shrine. We loved the Crocs on the little girl, just above.
The Torii marks the boundary between the ordinary world and the sacred. The ones at this shrine were truly massive, as befits the dedication to Emperor Meiji (who is buried here along with Empress Shoken). The Shrine was built in 1920, just a few years after their deaths.

People wash their hands and rinse out their mouths before proceeding to the shrine for prayer.

Prayers can be offered with the help of ema or votive tablets.

Sake breweries offer barrels of sake every year in honor of Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken and their divine souls. Through the Meiji Restoration of imperial rule to Japan, the foundation for international trade and commerce was laid. It was a rapid transition from feudal to modern.
Weddings at the shrine are very popular. There is another procession every time you turn around. When a young man we were chatting with at the counter of a little rice bowl restaurant near our hotel learned of our visit to the Meiji-jingo Shrine, he told us about his parents’ wedding there 30 some years ago.

 

The Last Lobster Roll

One reason for the short line today at Sesuit Harbor was a rather chilly 58 degree (14 degrees Celsius) lunchtime air temperature. That there was a line at all is testament to the drawing power of Cape Cod’s best lobster roll and the last chance to experience it this year (or maybe forever).

What makes this lobster roll special is the sheer quantity of perfectly cooked claw meat and the great restraint the kitchen shows in adding much of anything else to interfere with it.

It’s not a fancy place, but an outdoor cafe in a busy harbor and marina.

That provides a bit of entertainment value.

We’ll be following the local news. The neighbors want to shut down the entire operation because its popularity generates too much traffic. Seems that the owners of a lot of very beautiful and expensive homes built after the marina and cafe had been in operation for many years would like to improve the neighborhood. That would be a disappointment for those of us with a fondness for a superb lobster roll in a pretty setting and who are willing to tolerate the traffic jam for a few minutes of home grown perfection.

Fly Fishing the East Outlet

The headwaters of the Kennebec River are not quiet streams trickling through the forests of Maine; they are two massive dammed outlets managed by Florida Power & Light. The outlets flow from the largest lake in New England, Moosehead Lake, and meet at Indian Pond before continuing towards the Atlantic. At the East Outlet, fishing guides launch their float boats so we can get a lot closer to the land-locked salmon and trout that make fly fishing a sport.

This is also moose country. Headed up to Kokadjo where a friendly park ranger said the moose come certain times of day. No luck, but a nice spot. Couldn’t miss all the warning signs on the main highway. Apparently, there are lots of collisions with moose. We were warned.

The East Outlet offers quite a ride, depending on the water releases by the power company. The guides rely on a certain amount of water to make it a “float” trip. And, if you’re fishing, there’s a certain amount of water needed to draw the fish up into the river and out of Indian Pond. Somehow, even our wildest places are managed – and there’s usually some friction behind the scenes.

The fish park themselves at just the right spots to snag a snack as it passes by, like the cop on a motorcycle behind a billboard. The trick is to mimic prey and fool him into an attack. Of course, your fly has to go by his billboard.

Even though it was a slow day for even the most experienced anglers, a few fish took the bait, so to speak.

This is a beautiful fish. Per our guide, John Wood, it’s a male salmon just coming into reproductive maturity, a few years old. The ethic of catch and release is essential to sustain a fishery like this one. It’s very popular. But, that day of fishing in the wild north country helped support quite a few people and not a single fish was harmed.

Close to Home

A car pulled off the road in front of our house. The driver got out and came across the driveway holding up her phone to start taking pictures. She hadn’t noticed that our dog, Momo, was being walked in the white pines. Suspicious of people taking pictures of our property that’s under an environmental “order of conditions,” Jim came out of the trees with a dog straining at its leash and an ambiguous “can I help you?”

Turns out she just wanted a picture of what she’d been admiring every day of her summer vacation – our shed. When we put it in, someone teased us about why we had put an outhouse in front of such a nice house. Now a few buoys picked up on winter beaches dressed with some close-out geraniums made someone look afresh at another person’s eyesore.

 

Beauty is in how we decide to see things.

Shifting Sands

Coast Guard Beach in Eastham is consistently ranked as one of the most beautiful beaches in the country. It will likely continue to enjoy that distinction for some time to come. However, this year visitors may be surprised by some quirky outcroppings. Our recent blizzard carved away at the sand cliffs and exposed freshwater peat from an old cedar bog and some cedar roots. Lots of people came to take a look, giving the surfers competition for parking spaces out at the old Coast Guard Station.

The path down to the beach hasn’t been repaired yet. It’s National Park Service property.

The surfers are using paddles. (Yes, those are people, not seals.) The surf was rough, but no one seemed to be catching any good waves. The water was a chilly 40 degrees.
The peat has a tough surface, yet feels soft. You can see a band of clay in the second photo. The local paper reported that the peat had been covered by sand for 150 years (not that long, in fact). That must have been one heck of a storm. There was a lot of wood strewn about on the beach, some more interesting looking than others.
Our beach never stops shifting, whether subtly or dramatically. We still find chunks of asphalt in the surf from when the “perfect storm” of 1978 claimed a big parking lot. That’s why most summertime visitors must take a shuttle. When Henry Beston wrote The Outermost House, it was much further outermost than it is now. All this in a mere blink of geological time, all the more beautiful for being here on a limited-time basis.
There’s a big difference between a summer beach and a winter beach. Come summer, one theory goes, this may all be covered up by sand.

 

In the midst of winter

Winter can be raw and ferocious or still and sparkling, but never bleak on the outer cape. The other night we could feel the house shake from the force of blizzard winds coming from the north across the pond, throwing ice against our cedar shake. Luckily, we only suffered a branch through a screen and our power held firm. We were far more fortunate than the vast majority of people out here in the blizzard of February 2013.

We drove to First Encounter Beach and found the road blocked. The large parking area was covered with storm surge slush chunked with the timber that had been decks and steps. It was low tide and the beach below the debris was swept clean, the snow mounded in a berm near the normal high tide line. The protective dune torn away to form a new divide and fringe for the beach.

At Nauset Light Beach on the Atlantic, the bottom of the stairs down to the beach are dangling. The escarpment has been further eroded as the ocean has its way with the land, continuously redefining where we may be. The light itself remains safe at a distance, for now.

Winter affords us much greater visibility to the natural world as those pesky leaves are mostly gone for the season. The drama on our pond is sometimes stark, but beautiful in its own way. A Red-tailed Hawk takes advantage of a Merganser frozen in the ice after failing to save itself; a Great Blue Heron makes off with his catch (stealth pays); a Kingfisher watches and waits.

Eastham in December

Beachcombing in December has lots to offer. We found this whale vertebra just after high tide at First Encounter beach. It was about two feet from the water’s edge. The Cape is prime whale watching territory. We’d love to find a shark’s tooth.

What good is a great place for walking on beaches if you don’t have a dog? Momo is a chocolate lab puppy with a distinctive personality (the breeder called her Alvin). She loves the beach and the bike trail, but is still a bit shy with an abundance of puppy rambunctiousness and a fondness for cuddling on your lap.

Sea turtles are often trapped in Cape Cod Bay while trying to head south for the winter. When they become “cold stunned” and wash up on shore, volunteers find them on the beaches and start them on a human-aided journey south. Here, Amanda calls in a Kemp’s Ridley turtle to Mass Audubon for a pick-up from Breakwater Beach in Brewster.

Topping a dune at First Encounter looking towards Bee’s River, on the trail of a good scent.

Kyle drove up with his Grandmother to spend Christmas and New Years with us. This is Hemenway Landing looking out into Nauset Marsh.

Nauset Marsh lies behind Coast Guard beach on the Atlantic. You may be able to make out the waves crashing near the horizon. Most of the birds we see on our pond fly back and forth to the marsh. It’s very close. You often see people wading out from small boats for shellfish; yes, even in December.

Back towards Hemenway Landing from the Coast Guard station at Coast Guard beach, the following evening in late December.

Taking a run at low tide, towards dusk, Coast Guard beach.

Last minute requests, Christmas Eve.

The annual photo with cousin Katherine, on break from that au pair gig in Paris.

The first snow of the winter looks spectacular. 2013 here we come!