Seascape with buzzard

I went for a bike ride along the seashore and this buzzard was enlivening an already spectacular seascape. In Japanese, buzzards say "pee-hyoro-hyoro-hyoro".

Sundry blossoms

If you're not particularly concerned about the blossoms of the weeping plum, I'm afraid this post will hold little interest for you.








For those who have grown tired of plum blossom, here are some apricot.

Goodbye Jack

C'mon boy, let's go.

Lowdown
Feeling pretty bad
Feeling like I lost the best friend
That I ever had

Jack is dead. Jack was running down the road and got hit by a kei-truck that didn't stop. I wasn't there and don't know the details, but I have a feeling my anger would be uncontrollable if I did.

Jack was a great companion and I feel his loss intensely.

Jack!

Kingfisher

Recently I spotted a kingfisher fishing in our local river, the Konogawa. It was the biggest kingfisher I've ever seen.



And as an added bonus, here's a regular visitor to the blueberries. I don't know what kind of bird he is, but he's very pretty and quite assiduous in fertilizing the ground under the blueberries.

Various scenes

I got an iPhone a few months ago, and I'm quite impressed with the photos it takes. Here are a few recent ones.

From our balcony. There was some precipitation at sunset.

The temple thingie. November storms tore the doors off and broke the glass,
but the day after I reported the tragedy to the village headman, they were as new again.

Not a bad spot for a house.

The weather has been quite weird of late, with some spectacular skies.
This lopped-off double rainbow with triangular sunbeam was one of the
more spectacular phenomena. It lasted for about 5 minutes and was hard to ignore.

Mikan trees, lakes, sea, islands

What have we here? African dancing girls!
Christmas evening at the African night was a blast.

Crime scene

I went for a walk at lunchtime the other day up the valley where a French fellow and his wife are building a new house (very international we are here), when I came upon this grisly scene.

It's a tanuki with a smallish hole in its rump (it probably felt like a largish hole to the tanuki in question).


The question is, whodunnit? There are certainly hunters around here because I've seen them with their guns, but I don't think they'd shoot a tanuki, nor would they leave it lying dead on a pavement. Would a boar be able to gore a tanuki, and would it have reason to do that? The corpse was gone the following day.

Round pond resurgens

In April last year, I took out my round pond and replaced it with a bath. Having pondered (ha!) where to put it next, I decided that the very place where it has sat since April would be fairly ideal.

So I dug a hole with a remarkably perfect shape for the steel pot, and rolled it in.

A well-dug hole.
Note the long-handled, small-headed spade which I cobbled together myself.

Now I'll just have to avoid falling into it in the dark.

Two ponds now. Boy will the frogs be happy!