We had one day of cherry blossoms in Nagoya this year, and I took snaps of some of ’em.

18-20 March 2024: A three-day ride into the foothills behind Okayama led by a friend in the area, in which I brought a road bike to a country tour and … found out. A tale of hot springs and cold weather.

A small roadside lunch counter in Okazaki that I discovered on my first camping trip, and still visit from time to time on a day trip.

I made waffles for breakfast this morning (well, there’s only one in the house now, so it’s looking like lunch as well). It’s a simple thing, here’s the recipe, transcribed from my late wife’s hand.

If you once “go on your travels,” it’s likely that some habitual comfort foods won’t be available in the place where you land. For me, one of those items is sourdough bread.

In March this year (2024), I’ll be making a journey to visit friends further to the west, beyond bicycle distance. They are cyclists, so I’ll be keen to take along a bike for local use, and that poses a thread-the-needle problem for my current stable of four steeds. The Dahon K3 is a tiny folding bike that can be taken on the train with no problem, but it’s not meant to carry loads, and it’s not geared for hills.

Today I followed through on a fix that I’ve thought about every single time I’ve used the day pack I’ve been carrying around for at least the last twenty years. Whether empty or full, the bag is a repository of memories, as I realize in setting down to write around the photos below. So we’ll start with memories, and go on from there. I have a rough idea of the backpack’s age because I remember buying it at the “Big 1” (ビッグワン) discount store on the road between Hirabari station and the University family residence that was our first home here in Nagoya.

Kitchen-sink cartridge faucets seem to have about a ten-year life span. When we bought the house, it was a bit over ten years old, and the faucet was shot, and replaced in the course of remodelling the kitchen. I was wondering lately whether we maybe had stumbled into a more durable unit, but sure enough it recently began needing a little tap on the handle to keep it from dripping.

There are six varieties of citrus in the back garden: mikan; yuzu; lime; lemon; hassaku; and shiikuasa. If you aren’t familiar with it, the last in that list is commonly grown in Okinawa and southern regions of Japan. It’s so common in Okinawa that, during the visit for Mieko’s last rights, I was hard put to find orange juice on the shelves of a local market, until I realized that shiikuasa was in plentiful supply.

[30 January 2024] Coffee-loving friends recently gifted me a Bialetti Fiammetta coffee maker, suitable for solo consumption of the black nectar. I’d long admired stove-top espresso makers from afar, but never owned one myself, so this ranked pretty well up there on the wish-fulfillment scale. The unit had seen years of service, with the accretions and scorches to prove it. The “before” view is withheld to protect the innocent, but if you’re a coffee drinker, you’re well equipped to fill that gap in the narrative.