Thursday, July 19, 2012

We had a few hours off yesterday afternoon and went on a short local hike. I heard these cicadas for the first time two years ago, drifting down from the mountains that surround the valleys we've been working in. They start singing late afternoon and stop when it starts to get dark out. It's been one of my favorite sounds since the first time I heard it. It was a little different so close up, but still so cool that when they suddenly started up all around us in the cedar trees, I was making a wizard metal fist before I even realized what I was doing.

Friday, July 6, 2012

Sorry I haven't really had time to work on posting over the past week - work in Sasayama is a lot more hectic than it was two years ago. The situation here has changed quite a bit, and though there's never a dull moment, we start work at 7 and I usually can't sit down to do anything like this until around 10 PM, and then I'm too tired to be able to concentrate on anything anyway. It's fun, but I don't know how many pictures I'm going to be able to take this time. It's also been raining a lot, which makes sightseeing bike rides or walks on the weekends kind of difficult. I'm here for 3 more weeks - if I can't update much while I'm here, I should have time once I go back to Kyoto. That thatched roof house in the first pictures is where I'm staying. We're working on the white building on the right.