Forest Grump.

August came in like a lion. Two weeks of record-breaking heat and the bluest skies. Up at the crack of dawn. Tomatoes and fresh greens....endless summer happiness.

Now we have had a month of rain and cloudy skies. Today another typhoon pummelled us. Grrrrrrrr...grumpy as hell. A glimpse of blue sky before sunset. The autumn insects have takes oven from the soaking cicadas.

The president of Seiwa (The natural dye supplier and textile college in Tokyo we all know and love dearly.) came over for lunch a few weeks back in the sweltering muggy grey heat. They have a small gallery in the entrance of the shop before you take the elevator up to the school. He asked me for something to display in the gallery that was dyed with the indigo his company produces. Reluctantly, I lent him a few of the paper/linen stencil dye scarves as he went out the door.

The staff sent me a picture of the exhibition and my scarves when the exhibition was over. They had displayed them inside out.

The designs on the back are very cool. But they are obviously the back.

Helpless helpless helpless.....like the mouldy summer just greyed and gone.

There were a few bright spots. I grumpily guarded my free time in the gloomy humidity this summer. Annemarie is an acquaintance of an old student. She brought some Dutch sunshine into the house for a while. An email just arrived from her and it seems she wants to make Japan home for a while now. Thinking about this as I went for my late afternoon walk/jog and surveyed the damage of this morning's typhoon. 

There is still a magic in Japan that will convince people to give up their comfortable lives and move here. This contrasted with the tragic flood of humanity out of Syria had my head spinning as I picked up wind fall branches on the road and threw them off to the side in the rich-green-misty-wet mountain cream-coloured sunset of a depopulating mountain village here in Japan.