The Sunshine State//日照州

Yesterday was my youngest son’s first undoukai/sports festival. As usual, I waited until the morning of the event to get ready. I was unable to give it my full attention though because at the same time I was following reports about Hurricane Matthew on social media. I’m from Amelia Island, Florida. My family now mostly…

Volume 2:: Home Videos

So there was a little more editing in this volume but still working on the cinematography side of things (hard to do when you are chasing your subjects). This is our summer vacation, essentially. From mid-July to yesterday. https://vimeo.com/179030018

City Mall//シティモール

One of my favourite jokes about the Goto City Mall is that it lives up to its name, which transliterated from katakana to English reads shitty. It is essentially a grocery store with a big 100 yen shop, a Mr. Donuts and an udon restaurant, plus a small variety of shops upstairs. According to one…

How my garden grows//どのよう私の庭が成長する

One of the biggest transitions I made when we moved here a year and some months ago was to leave behind a huge vegetable garden and begin container gardening again. I have always grown something but when we moved to Florida that something became our food source. I learned how to battle caterpillars and ants…

夏休み// Summer Holidays

Oh my. I am not going to lie. This summer is breaking me. And I am from Florida. We would probably not be suffering so much if we had something fancy like an air conditioner. But we don’t. We don’t have a car either. Or a bike. We do have highs in the mid-to-upper 90s. We…

Random Bits of Us:: July version

Last month, I got a new to me iPhone and have been accumulating little clips from life here on Gotou following around the four primates who call me mom. I plan to improve my cinematography and editing skills so hopefully these monthly mixed tapes will become progressively more watchable. Until then, they are probably just…

Let’s Play// 遊びましょう

We are in the middle of the rainy season so that means when the clouds break, we are out the door and usually to the park. This last Sunday was one of those days and we went to the nearby seaside park with this little rocky stream running through it. It was a very small…

Green Persimmons// 青い柿

This year the persimmons decided they were tired of being autumn fruit They wanted to know what it was like to have the full summer sun ripen their skin orange, to have a bird other than inky crows rest amongst their limbs If they could have talked with the loquat first they would have seen…

About the rain… // 雨について。。。

In Nagoya, my home for three years, there is a display at the municipal science museum showcasing the annual rainfall in the city. They used test tubes and blue beads to depict the amount of rain. Most of the tubes were empty save a handful in June for the rainy season and a couple in…

Out of sync (aka Gotou time)// ずれる (五島の時間）

It is Thursday night, almost Friday morning, and I am drinking whisky before taking a long soak in the oversized sink that is my tub. It’s been months since I dropped in here. It feels like years, it feels like seconds. Time does not run on a straight track: it bends and contorts, it fades…

A Love Story // 愛の物語

In the late 1930s, Martin and Daisy left the tobacco farms in southern Georgia for promises of better pay down in Florida. They were but sixteen and seventeen but times were rough for the children of sharecroppers so when they eloped, their families were relieved of additional mouths to feed. They made it just over…

Silence//静寂

I lost my voice last week. It happens occasionally to me, almost on an annual basis. As a language teacher, it renders me ineffective so I have to take time off. I have to be silent or else my voice will not heal. I do the same thing with my writing, I realise. I go…