On happy Mondays

Today T and I hung out in Kawasaki, going to the Nihon Minkaen, an open air museum in the woods, or at least a park that actually looked like woods instead of a silly little grove with manicured trees (which is what usually passes for woods around here). It was really relaxing, and a whole lot of fun. Definitely a good way to end my four day weekend, which I was feeling a little guilty about taking seeing as I managed to do spectacularly little with it. Still, it feels worth it to be feeling so refreshed. So yeah, brace yourselves, idyllic picture spam incoming.

This lantern is a sad mushroom.

It's almost December, and there's still blooming bushes around. I mean, how great is that?

Minimalism to the extreme: "Let's put a funky stick here. There, decoration done." I fucking love that shit.

There were little mini-shrines made of stone all over the place, and most of them had small stacks of coins, except this one, that just had a single flower, placed very deliberately on the stone in front of it. I don't know, I just really liked that.

I get so incredible inspired by seeing these old pillar-beam constructions with these beautiful openings and sliding doors and staircases with storage in them. There's just so much great simplicity and space in these places. I kinda want to mash them together and bring something new and modern and great out of it. Something with Japanese maple trees around, because that's honestly the most beautiful tree in the world to me. That red is magical.

Someone really got sick of my paparazzi behaviour.

This place kinda needed a pond with koi fish to make it perfect though. There was some cute Engrish to keep me entertained though, I guess that was a good consolation prize. I do love me some fish though.

There were also cute old people around, keeping the fireplaces going and telling stories about the houses. As with all Japanese people whenever I'm around T, they only really talk to him and hardly even look at me. I feel a little like a ghost hovering behind him. I guess it's just as well, seeing as old people talk really really fast and in that old person way which makes it hard to grasp what's going on most of the time. One granny did really try to involve me in the conversation though, and another granny gave me a grasshopper made out of a blade of grass. Grannies here give me stuff, like I'm some kind of overgrown child that they want to do nice things for, and I guess that's a kind of communication too.

I love old people.

T doesn't like having his picture taken, and neither do I, but we like making fools of ourselves, and that's fun. It makes me happy to see pictures that weren't planned, where I'm smiling and laughing and generally look like there's not a thing wrong in the world. Not fixed, not staged, just... there, you know? In the moment. I used to hate it, but now I just feel kinda good about it.