Where Globe-Trotting meets Beach-Combing
I find myself unable to shake a certain melancholy that descended with the new year. February’s freezing rain gave way to March’s glowering, shifting sky and a damp, whipping wind. This wind blew me down to the river, hands full of chipboard that used to be bread. It inspired a seasonal haiku:dull unending gloomunwanted and…
Japanese girls always have these beautiful, compact purses. So I’ll be on the train, checking out cute shoes and bags as usual, when some girl with a tiny purse will pull out a Victorian-style hand mirror and examine her bangs. Where did that come from? Or it starts raining and suddenly all these purses open…
I love curtains. Until yesterday, I didn’t have any; only a stylish shower curtain covered one window. That’s because–while curtains more than anything say ‘a grown-up lives here’–I am intimidated by all the parts, pieces and work that goes into each ‘window treatment.’ Also I think the name ‘window treatment’ is dumb. Seriously, poles, hooks,…
I live near Sakuragaoka Station–that means Hill of Cherry Blossoms. Further along the Odakyu line toward Tokyo is my station’s sister, Umegaoka–Hill of Plum Blossoms. Surprise! Umegaoka is just five minutes from Hanegi Park, one Tokyo’s top parks for viewing plum blossoms. I stalked this beautiful couple like a paparazzo for a few minutes until,…
What does that mean!? Well, it’s tonight’s weather report and made me laugh, but it means the winds are changing! This weekend, Passport Diaries passed the 20,000 blog-views point in less than two years! Or actually, in just over a year, because I added the counter after about six months of blogging! Please help me…
Nothing cheers up a droll day like setting the table for tea. And my favorite daydream lately is about the cherry blossom tea party we’ll have down by the river when the cherry trees bloom, so I translated that daydream into a pretty table setting complete with branches of cherry blossoms from the florist. My…
I heard about a park somewhere in Odawara City where more than 35,000 plum trees lift their blossoming branches to frame distant Mount Fuji. That seemed worth the hour-long train ride, so I blocked off an afternoon for exploring. I must not have left at the exact time I’d researched, because lo and behold, I…
