smelling the roses

So, it occurs to me (usually when I'm walking around town, seeing things first-hand, or otherwise away from the convenience of a computer) that with all the time I spend relating my (often banal) adventures here, I've done very little of detailed or expressive description. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a true shame, because this is not a vacation - it is everyday life, and I think that in many ways it is the quiet beauties that really breathe life into the everyday.

So let me try to break it down a little.

Sonobe. Sonobe in some ways defies explanation. It is the border between city and countryside, a patchwork layout of cheesy apartment aesthetic and stunning traditional architecture. There are a few main thoroughfares, and a myriad of quiet lanes, my favorite of which is a back street between my apartment and my school, which lined by trees, gardens, and even a little rice field or two.

Autumn has finally come, and with it, a change in the weather. When I wake up in the morning, blearily rolling off a flat futon and padding across tatami covered floors, there is a nine out of ten chance that the world behind my windows will be covered with fog. Sonobe is almost completely surrounded by mountains, one of which looms beyond my balcony, but often the mist is so thick that the mountain, though nearby, disappears in its entirety.

It is often cool when I set out for school just after eight o'clock, though it's generally even cooler in the evenings. Early in my walk I pass a simple railing, on which several spiders have made their webs. The webs always glisten with dew, so clearly visible and crystalline that it's almost surreal. They look like decorations for Halloween or even Christmas, but for the abrupt shock of finding an actual, and often uncomfortably large spider presiding in the center.

On Wednesday nights, I make the solitary trek from my tea ceremony instructor's home back to my apartment, usually between 10 and 10:30. I take my favorite lane back, and in its quiet I become so engrossed staring upwards that one of these days I'll probably walk into one of the ditches lining the road. In Sonobe, set back from larger cities, you can see more stars on that shady lane than I ever see in Decatur. My favorite nights are the just slightly cloudy ones, the misty dark of the clouds making the visible stars twinkle all the brighter. There is a feeling of closeness to the heavens, like if I took off running I could outrace gravity and leap into the sky.

The relative darkness of Sonobe also lends itself to the full moon. Walking along that same path beneath a full moon, everything is clearly illuminated in its pale light, so bright you could read your watch by it. Every shadow is strictly defined by the light's silver edge, every detail visible but wan. The moon shines so brightly that it always seems as if I've wandered onto a quiet, empty movie set, where they are imitating the moon and overdoing it.

Sonobe is really amazing in the little ways.