Back to Fall

After 2 years in Japan, I have come to depend on the seasons changing.  It is no longer like my California days when the only thing that signaled change was the drink menu at Starbucks--Pumpkin lattes meant fall and peppermint lattes reminded you that it was supposed to be winter...brrr???  But here, in the land of Nihon, there are real seasons, trusty-worthy and cyclical, the seasons come and they go and then they come again.

So it is fall, or at least the beginning of fall, so what is that like?  Well, the trees haven't begun to change yet, but in small clusters red spider lillies, or higabana in Japanese, start to bloom.  In our town you can see a few bunches of these bright red flowers and when they first bloom it looks as though small fireworks have exploded from the earth.  But it is not until you travel to Koma, about 1 and a half hours from Tokyo, that you see them in their true beauty.

There is no comparison to this sight, expect maybe the poppy fields of "Wizard of Oz" yet instead of making you fall asleep like the poppies in the movie, these fiery flowers awaken your senses with their vivid color and sheer volume.  It as if someone has painted a beautiful country-side scene complete with babbling brook and green fields and then accidentally spilled red paint all over the canvas.  Yet, these fields are no accident.

By far, my favorite part of the spider lilly fields is the dark bark of the trees protruding out of the velvety carpet created by the flowers.  It is like seeing a humpback whale surfacing from the ocean and breeching the water.  The trees are part of the field yet entirely different, complimenting yet breaking the overwhelming red produced by the flowers.  

What this trip to the country-side reminded me is how easy it is to forget that no matter how long you live somewhere you should never forget to live as if you are a traveler.  We often get caught up in work dead-lines, cleaning the house, and taking care of laundry and forget about how fleeting life really is.  These flowers can only be seen for about a week.  Before that they look like tiny green poles pushing out from the deep brown mud and after that they look like any other brown decaying foliage.  But, if you can bare to forget about the laundry and the grading for one day, to travel outside of yourself and your town, you might just run across something wonderful.

As I was taking a picture this butterfly landed on the flower, posing, ready for me to snap!