Harvesting Time

Some photos from the recent ride over Umenoki, Yanagizawa and Dosaka as an inpiration to dive deep into Autumn feelings.

Starting with the Tamagawa valley where it is the most beautiful, between Ome and Okutama about. No speed bumps and barriers can be seen.Rice Paddies before the harvest in the Enzan valley after coming down from Yanagizawa. One could almost see Tom Cruise walking around.Before the harvest still to keep away the crows (not effective in case of German ones) but couldn't keep away the storm.Ready. Everything neatly lined up on both sides of the field. After the work is done .......waiting for the bus home. It makes me nervous to see only people above the age of 60 working in the fields. Who will harvest all our food in 20 years to come?
... long is the approach up to Umenoki and many drivers have lost courage and given up in the middle of their undertaking.Luckily life has it's compensations Like the fast viaduct supported run down from Yanagizawa. David will do this one on Saturday I guess.

That reminds me that I wanted to write something about Kosumosu, its absence or more precise about this song "Where have all the flowers gone" which I was forced to learn as teenager wit my guitar teacher and which came very handy then when demonstrating against nuclear weapons and Pershing rockets in the Seventies and early Eighties. Joan Baez was a very prominent figure at this time and being a big bob Dylan fan in the Seventies I naturally hated her. OK, she had sang in Woodstock but she was much too old and too much this teacher type baby.

Luckily we Germans have the mysterious Marlene Dietrich who re-did the song in German :

" Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, wo sind sie gebliiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeben."

the length of the "iiiiiiiieeeee" expressing Weltschmerz, unbearable sadness and of course dissatisfaction with the stationing of nuclear weapons on unholy German soil.

I once stayed at a hotel in a small fishing village in Iceland, run by a Romanian who has worked at the Tokyo Hilton previously. He showed me the "blue room" where Marlene Dietrich has slept in the Thirties. She probably has seen better hotels but then she was on the escape from Nazi Germany.

I got five pamphlets about the hotel from the Romanian and was asked to distribute them in Japan "to penetrate the market".

Later the day I went out with my son on a fisherboat whale watching while Kazuko and our newborn daughter stayed behind at a small cafe at the port of the village. Later Kazuko told me that an older American couple entered the cafe, sat down close to her and Karen. She could just hear the man saying to his wife: "Look, Eskimos!" before the camera flash went off and took her and Karen frontal.
Marlene, where have you gone?
I was going to see an American company on Monday and while riding up the escalator to the reception on the 2nd floor I could see the office space of another Japanese company selling aromatic scents. Japan has come a long way in terms of cool biz business attire and also sheet metal furniture may be a thing of the past in a youthful and dynamic company setting.

But take a look at the seating lay out - nothing has changed at all.