Jolly Holiday

 "Spare your people, O LORD. Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples,'Where is their God?' "                                   ` - Joel 2:17b

                                                    (Really bad picture of Kushigahama eki)

Kushigahama.  You might remember that this station is a byword because I've made so many of my mistakes with it. Once we asked a student if it was Shunan, got what we thought was a yes, and jumped right off. It took us about ten seconds to realize that, while kushigahama might be part of Shunan, it was never the less, not the right station. It was on that occasion that we got to use our first green pay phone and our trusty phone cards. 

       This election day I was, once again, at Hikari, teaching and eating. Mrs. Dorothy made kobochya soup (a kabochya is a kind of squash. It's usually translated as "pumpkin", but it's not really a pumpkin. Taste like one though). Since the kabochya's skin is green, God gave the Japanese kaki. Looking out my window, I find I want too burst out singing "I'm dreaming of an orange autumn."                                            (Beautiful, but mouth-drying, kaki, growing enticingly in my front yard)

  

       Oh, in case you're wondering, today is not a holiday. But my students and I did go out for lunch at the fun bagel shop. I had a delicious BLT sandwich.  Look at this crazy "very berry soda," it tasted just like kakigori (sans condensed milk). But no, today was not a holiday. Actually, today's title comes from that Mary Poppin's song, because as I was leaving the church I looked up at the sky and the first thing that popped into my head was  "Have you ever seen the sky so blue?" I spent the rest of the drive home trying to figure out the words. They actually go "have you ever seen the grass so green? or a bluer sky?"

       Anyway, my whole point is that the sky was amazing. The horizon was a soft, and pale aqua, almost robin's egg blue, and then it faded up until, at the very top of the sky, it became a darker, more serious, periwinkle-esque color. And the clouds. The small fleecy clouds scattered here and there. あきばれ (akibare). A Fine Autumn day.   

                                                         (Dish of salt outside of  Hamakatsu)
                     

                       Oh, this is for my sister. It's a dish of salt, sitting right outside a restaurant. I think that, in the zen tradition, salt is seen as an evil-spirit cleanser. For that reason, some establishments leave salt outside their door as a form of protection. I think salt is also sometimes part of the funeral service, but I'm not hundred percent sure.