spider lily...?

After the service at my local temple today, I saw an army of this flowers on the street. I think it's called spider lily (not really sure of the english name, got this from Wikipedia). When I was a child, we used to say if we take this flower home, the house will catch a fire. Also it's got some other ominous names like 'death flower' etc. It's not such a loved flower. Though I quite like this since i was little... I wonder if I can see this in Australia too！

end of summer treats

My favorite sweet in my home town, only available in summer:)

Autumn has arrived

It's been an autumn weather since about Thursday. I need a blanket now when I sleep. It was really hot so I didn't need anything to sleep just earlier this week...
I can see that the sky is different from summer's and I'm starting to see some young rice grain, though still green. It'll be all golden before the harvest season. It's a lot more comfortable to walk outside.
I went to another shrine today. Atsuta shrine - its supposed to be second most holy shrine that holds one of three sacred treasures of Japan. This Shrine has a sword called Kusanagi. The others being a mirror and a jewel.
This is the shrine where I would love to get married in if I'm ever going to get married!

Seimei Shrine

I am a shintoist and buddhist and become much more religious whenever I'm in Japan.
This shrine is called Seimei shrine dedicated for Abe no Seimei, the Onmyoji - specialist for Onmyodo. It is a practice involves Yin Yan, astrology, cosmology etc... He was a superstar in about 6th century amongst superstitious Japanese people. I only know a bit about it so I would like to learn more.
I'm dreaming of traveling all around Japan one day to visit all temples and shrines...

Summer walk

I'm just loving the walk in the morning to see all flowers that I can't see in winter.
Summer morning is really lovely - I walk with doggies, 3 of us, no one around.

Childhood places revisited and first experience!

I was walking with dogs early this morning. I saw places I used to play with my friends when I was a kid. We used to think this place was haunted. Well It now looks more haunted than ever before!!! It wasn't this green when I was a kid. Cool looking though, like forests in Miyazaki's film.


This is an entrance driveway to an empty house. Now it's demolished and taken over by plants. We used to secretly sneak into this empty house, expecting something scary or mysterious would happen. It was so fun and scary. I remember getting out of this place with countless mosquito bites and cuts and scratches. Now It is jungle like the place above.


It was such a beautiful morning! Green carpet in the rice paddy, as it is summer now. Pink carpet in spring, pale yellow in autumn and dark brown in winter.

I realised I dream of these places all the time now but I didn't realise until this morning.
It was sooooo fun as a kid, everyday was an adventure! I feel glad that I grew up in a countryside, not in a city with many people and buildings.



Yesterday I voted for the first time in my life. I went to Australia before I had the voting right in Japan and obviously I don't have a voting right in Australia. And whenever I came back to Japan, it's never a voting time.
It was a huge huge surprise for Jap politics this year, it was in newspapers internationally including Australia. Conservative Japanese people finally made a huge step forward...in almost 6 decades.
I don't much know many politicians and parties so I just voted for the party my parents voted...