Attachment.  Almost all belonging gone except beloved coffee table. The one I bought after the earthquake and carried home from Harborland to Port Island. I  realized I must be blocking it,  that it is my "kinuta"--the word means fulling block, for washing and blocking kimono in autumn, and is the title of my favorite Noh play. Wife mourns husband whose return from the capital has been delayed for another year, and beats the fulling block in the garden during moonlit autumn evenings--forlorn. She pines away and dies, but cannot cut the ties with and yearning for earth, and the play ends with a kind of sutra chanting, helping her finally cut the tie and go to Nirvana. I wish there were videos of Noh plays, I'd love to watch it again. So I feel the coffee table is a symbol of what I cannot let go....interesting insight.

When you are 60+ and every muscle and bone in your body aches, packing becomes surreal....easier to throw out things, odder ways of combining them in boxes. A rule of thumb--for packing, allow a week for every decade of life; I'm two weeks short, alas.

Green Day: April 29th National Holiday, the Showa Emperor's birthday, named "Green Day," by chance is the day I got a flight; green for 'go'....

"I don't need much money, anyway," Hajime laughed. "Either way, we'll have to live pretty modestly up on our mountain in Ajiro. My dad's about to retire, you know. When you come to visit, you'll have to bring us meat, okay?"
"Meat?"
"My mom says we're going to grow vegetables in the garden out back, so I guess we'll have lots of those, and since we'll be living in Ajiro, dried fish and things like that should be pretty cheap. So I'll help out in the garden and stuff, and I'll make my stuffed animals, and we'll live our quiet lives."
"Okay, I get it. I'll bring lots of meat," I laughed. 
                                        --There is no Lid on the Sea
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       --The cherry blossoms at Himeji Castle (called 'the white heron'). Translating Senhime, the story of the princess, is a project!

Picture by Don Todt