Kamakura, Japan. April 2011.
| And so begins another school year; from out of the seasonal interstice, a blur of bright yellow school-bags like jet-packs when standing, then beating wings in motion, and the momentary repetition of stamps of white socks in Mary-Jane’s thumping along from the train platforms to school rooms. |
Kamakura, Japan. April 2011.
| One more bicycle before summer ends. I took this one a couple of years ago, meant to post it and never quite got around to it. It encapsulates something quintessentially Japan for me. It’s not a place of big supermarkets and concrete-block malls—there are big supermarkets, don’t get me wrong, but there is still very much a culture of locally owned shops and services. Instead of pulling the family SUV into the superstore lot, for the most part in Japan, you can pedal a bike to the bakery or the or the fruit seller and buy what you need put it in the handlebar basket and pedal home. In spite of the surrounding metropolis, it seems to keep life on a livable scale. |
Kamakura, Japan. April 2011.
Kamakura, Japan. April 2011.
| It is very nearly Sakura season again in Japan, which has me thinking of this trip we took to Kamakura the first time we came to Japan. We were heading for the main street where there is a two kilometer stretch of boulevard lined with cherry trees and I took this photo on the train platform. Originally, it was the poster that drew my attention, looking so like what we had come to see. In retrospect, though, it’s the likeness of the woman in the poster to the woman on the platform that makes me smile. You know, life and art in mutual imitation. |
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