... actually, driving is going fairly well, all things considered. Aside from the first, nearly-heart-attack-inducing 8-minute drive from the car rental place to my apartment earlier today, I think I've been doing well. Unfortunately, the hardest place to drive in my general vicinity is the road leading to my apartment. In many places, it's too narrow for two cars to comfortably pass, so whichever driver decides to be more considerate backs up to an area that they can comfortably pull off to the side. This is made difficult by the fact that the road leading to my apartment is lined on one side by a stream leading to the ocean which lacks guard rails in many places.
As with many things Japanese, my car came with an extra something to make it even more adorable: a Jenglish tag on the plaid blue seat covers. Just in case I wasn't sure about the seat cover's relationship with the car.
... they're friends, obviously.
On a completely different subject, a long time ago, one of my friends told me that I absolutely ~had~ to try a Japanese peach, or momo. I finally got around to it, and oh my-- it's sort of like daintily packaged bliss. First of all, they're enormous, a good-enough sized portion to comfortably sit in but adequately fill your hand. Secondly, they're juicy, with a quality of juice unrivaled in my experience. And, unlike the American/what-can-be-bought-in-America counterparts, the juice doesn't fly everywhere when you bit into the peach; it's relatively easy to enjoy without ending up a sappy mess. The scent is rather on the light side but can be detected without puncturing the skin. Finally, the color of the flesh is delicately pinkish, almost white, making the consumption of momo a high-quality aesthetic experience.
The only down-side to momo is how ridiculously priced they are, although what I'm paying is probably more than usual because of island inflation (did I really just pay ~800 yen... nearly 8 dollars... for 3 peaches? Oh yes I did). Given the whole package, though, momo are a rare but definetely-worth-it indulgence.
I wrote earlier about how mountainous Tsushima is, but I never would've been able to picture the reality, so here are a few brief glimpses. The picture on the left is one I randomly took from along the side of the road (during my driving practice earlier today), and the one on the right I actually climbed pretty high up to get, after tons of steps in the nearby Omega Park area (Omega is, apparently, a name of a company... I think):
... it really is like a tropical paradise.
Japanese towns are tucked into the nooks and crevices of these mountains. Take, for example, my apartment building. It's in Furusato, a "ward" of Kamitsushima. [Think of it this way: if Tsushima, the entire island, is a city, then Kamitsushima is a district, like Brooklyn but micro-scale, and Furusato is the equivalent of a neighborhood within Kamitsushima]. My apartment complex is the last thing on my road (I think... it doesn't seem like there's anything out there... the road continues, but I haven't actually explored in that direction yet), nestled between two mountain ridges. Because it's so far off the beaten track, as it were, there is an abundance of wildlife. I've seen swarms of dragonflies--looking out the window now, around dusk, there are maybe 150 flying around between the apartment complex and the woods, hopefully snatching up pesky mosquitoes and smaller bugs. Sorry the dragonflies don't photograph well-- you'll just have to come and see them. Here's what the apartment complex looks like:
Behind the complex, to the right of the light in the picture, is a Japanese-style graveyard, mostly mini-shrines with names on them and ashes interred within.
... Oh, wait! What's that in the lower left-hand corner?
Here's a close-up:
... identification, Uncle Ben?
For the record, this isn't the first time I've seen this kind of bird. They don't seem to be very shy and particularly like hanging out nearby the riverbed (now filled in with weeds) that defines one side of my road (note the absence. of. guard. rails!!).
Well, I hope the pictures this time around help you folks get a better idea of what it looks like here! ^^
2 comments:
That would probably be Ao-sagi (Grey Heron).
though the apartments don't look THAT impressive from the pictures, I like where they are...they look rather homely in a sense. glad your new life is so beautiful! <3 Squire
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