Two Dragons walk into a Bar

 No, just joking, but it’s a two for one dragon fly event, the shadow dragon showing its best angle on the the yellow railing.  Nothing bar the sun can do this.  

In a Flat Spin, Top Speed Origami

 

 If you happen to be in Kagoshima, on the island of Kyushu, in Japan on the overhead walkway to the Aquarium, you might be lucky like I was if you stop by a handicraft shop run by seniors, and even if their very good aprons don’t fit you, they didn’t fit me being made for and by lovely diminutive women, they will make a fuss about you as if you were Quite Something, if you ask after their health in Japanese - O-genki desu ka - will do the trick - and give you one, or two if there are two of you, of these excellent origami spinning tops, that turn into a blur of colour, which may be a metaphor for the passage of time, or just a nice use of centrifugal force. 

Rice Miles, or Wry Smiles - The train from Imari to Fukuoka

To get from the wonderful pottery town of Imari in Saga prefecture Kyushu, where lovely pots and porcelain have been despatched to far flung ports in Europe since before the Meiji Restoration, take the slow chuffing DC 125 One Man Diesel Car - complete with anime figures - past the rice crops of Ochichosari to Karatsu, taking in forests and the local bucolic glory,  before you change to Kyushu’s Chikuhi train line runs betweeen Karatsu and Fukuoka - this train line runs at a Kodachrome pace along the sea front,  it is slow enough to to see waves break and sigh over the sea vista, before you are engulfed into the suburban density of Fukuoka.   Smile, a train trip that delivers both rice miles and wry smiles, 

 

In the Shadow Forest - Kiso Road Stories

 

On the Kiso Road, along Nakasendo Way, at the top of the pass at Yubuhara, this group of deities stay shadow quiet but, like a moment of knowing, seem effortlessly, elusively elegiac. Of course one is not to know that this quiet group will always be waiting for you, and as the walk up through the forest being its own reward, this is that perfect thing, unanticipated beauty. 

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

 Food markets are the hero of any locale, and while Makishi Public Market is small and the ground floor seems to be just seafood and pickles, the fish  include the requisite Suess-ian colour scheme of Red Fish Blue Fish - and if you’re wondering about that glaucous eye on the lower right, and think it is quite toad-ish I am totally with you. Puff Puff.  In case you might want to know, my very poor reading of hiragana translates the red fish as aka -ho ( here i guess)  - chi,  and the blue fish as Irabucho, though here I might be quite off-piste.  As someone with truly dreadful handwriting I feel I have no purchase on complaint, and so can only commend this Fishmonger’s good characters.