Coming in on the train from Narita this afternoon, the strong winds were beating at the bright green rice, sending the stalks undulating like waves on the ocean, while the reeds in the background simply laid down, determined not to challenge the winds. The waves of rice lapped at the bases of the small hills, darker green, nearly black, with their conifers, small houses clustered on the hills above the sea of green. The farmer, clinging tightly to his wide-brin straw hat, wades between the rice fields, blue pants rolled up above the knees, his pale blue shirt ballooning out; maybe he is not so much holding his hat on as pressing himself firmly back to the ground, afraid that if he softens his grip, he will simply mount up into the sky, following the circling crows in their dark dance.
This evening, once settled in to my snug closet, I took a brief stroll past Tokyo Station, around the outskirts of the Imperial Palace grounds, through the maze of government buildings, and back again, my shirt clinging tightly to my back, the breeze nearly gone, the air thick; how I longed to be that farmer, aerated by the winds, lifted by the breeze, not wading through dense still air...
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