Trying to remember what happened a week ago isn't usually too difficult, but there are constantly moments here, now, where I know important details will slip my mind if I keep waiting so long to write anything down. It ends up sounding like a bunch of expository drivel and really isn't what I intended to do with this blog.
At dusk here every day coming from the woods on the hills, a staggered chorus of eerie sounds repeatedly swells and peters out in a distracting rhythm. It's gone by the time it gets dark, I'm still not sure whether it's the frogs or some locust-like insect, but there's nothing like it in New England. It's really captivating.
There are a Lot of frogs here, probably because it's so wet for so long, and the tanbo seem to be a great place for tadpoles to grow up. Rainwater, lots of it, runs down from the hills in streams like the one we go swimming in every day after work. I got here at the end of the rainy season, so there was a ton of water coming down the hills. Relatively large channels, built who knows when, border everything like gutters or small moats- houses, streets, fields- and the water seems to be distributed pretty evenly through the land between the hills. I always want to call them mountains, but they're not really mountains like the Rockies or the Appalachian mountains or anything like that. Some of the French girls here have hiked in the Alps and so they think it's pretty funny when anyone calls these ones mountains. They are impressively steep, regardless. There is a lot of bamboo and cedar growing in the forests here too, so they have a very different look than the woods back home, even from a distance. Anyway, there are lots of frogs, mostly tiny ones in the grass and the fields, which always have water running nearby- and since there's so much green here, there are pretty much little frogs everywhere. They sing at night, too. During the day, a bird with a really amusing call can almost always be heard in the trees near the fields - I was told they're uguisu, a kind of warbler. I had read sometime in the past few months that images of uguisu in ume (plum) trees are iconic in Japanese artwork, so I actually knew what they were talking about, which was nice.
In the hatake (field), a noticeable number of small metallic aqua blue beetles hang out under the kuromame plants, and white cranes fly overhead on a regular basis. I think cranes like to eat frogs as well as fish. Snakes also like frogs, and we saw a big one a few days ago, about 3-4 feet long, checking out a ledge in a terraced group of fields we were working on. It was almost completely apathetic to our attempts to chase it out of the field, and I think it was nearly half an hour before we got it to leave. There is at least one kind of poisonous snake here, but I'm told they're hard to miss. There are lots of spiders that weave those big spiral webs, and barn swallows (we have a nest on a rafter in one of the garage-type rooms, so the adults are constantly flying in and out of one of the side windows- it's a good thing there are so many insect eaters around here- even with them, some of the mosquitoes are big enough to knock you over) and also some skinny little type of bird that runs around on the road in front of the house and constantly bobs its tail. There are electric fences bordering all the forests that get turned on at night to keep the deer and wild boar from coming into the fields and eating everything. They put out big traps for raccoons, but I don't think they catch many. Where I got off the bus in Sasayama the first day, there was a snail climbing the stone wall outside someone's house with a shell about the size and shape of an Oreo cookie. I saw a couple of lizards running around on a low rock wall today- it was hot as hell, so it seemed perfectly appropriate. A couple of days ago, I was sitting outside early in the morning on the curb in front of the house when something bounced out into the street to my right- what looked like two ferrets were jumping and rolling around in the middle of the road. They played there for about ten seconds and took off- apparently weasels live out here too!
All the roads are very narrow, did I mention that? A couple of us took bikes out to find a local convenience store around sunset today- the road we took is considered a highway, and they do drive pretty fast down that way, but the whole thing is only as wide as a lane and a half of Boston road. We decided to come back the other way, around the back side of the hill instead- there are some fields back in that neighborhood that we work on so we thought it would be simple to find the way. We got a bit lost, of course- the road patterns here are so different than what I'm used to that I have a hard time navigating them, even though I might have a good idea of where I am in general. However, we did come across a gorgeous old kitsune (fox) shrine that I need to retrace my steps and find again so that I can get a closer look and take some photos.
I have an atrocious sunburn on my shoulder blades right now that I got through my shirt, and I'm not sure why since I spent less time in the sun today than I normally would while working. Need to figure that out- it was kind of a dark shirt and was soaked through with sweat... My arms were bare and they're fine. I brought a ton of sunblock with me. Field work is interesting- yesterday it was pretty dry so instead of wearing those horrible rubber boots, a couple of us just wore socks to weed a bean field. It was a lot more comfortable! I haven't worn my running shoes much- haven't been for a run either, but a New Zealander arrived recently that's interested in getting back into it, so maybe I will pretty soon. It's so damned hot during the day, though.
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