On ya bike...

Today was an odd one. In between practice, I did get out for two lovely rides in Chichibu and the local surrounds.

The first ride took me out of Chichibu to the other side of the next town - a place called Yokoze. I turned around when the mountains started to get serious. Save that ride for another day.

Here is a farmer just beginning his rice harvest. he had this nifty little powered harvester which not only cut the stalks, but bundled and tied the rice into sheafs as well - you can see these lying on the ground next to his path.





After the field is harvested, the sheafs (sheaves?) are hung up to dry. Yokoze is a bit more rural feeling than Chichibu. Lovely to ride through - the bike gives me the freedom to explore down side roads, and venture further, without eating into my practice time.




Buko-san is the mountain behind Chichibu and Yokoze both, and I cant help but be reminded of the movie "Princess Mononoke" - which describes the struggle between the forest and its representative spirits, and iron-age Japan, that had begun to see it as little more than fuel for the blast furnaces. The spirits of course were a bit cross.

Buko-san is high-grade limestone, and is being peeled like an apple. Pretty tragic, really. I can hear blasting every now and then, as the mountain is slowly broken down and turned into bags of cement to build modern japan.

This local statue of Buddha looked like it was about to have a shave. I guess the showercap and napkin were to protect from bird poo maybe...


The reason the day was a bit iffy for me was that my practice today consisted of blowing a single note, over and over, trying to find exactly the right combination of lip tension, embouchure, breath strength and flute position to achieve the best tone colour and strongest sound. I felt a bit like I was wandering around in the dark though, and wasnt really happy with the result. I know what I'm trying to achieve - Kakizakai's sound is the benchmark, and hes given me instructions for moving in that direction... but I still dont feel like im making any progress on this front. What kept me at it, despite the frustration, was one of the books I'm reading at the moment - a translation of a piece by a famous Zen monk called Dōgen, accompanied by a commentary by a current zen roshi - was at hand, and I kept picking it up when i got frustrated with blowing Ro (the lowest note on the flute). I'd read a bit, and then (in vairous different, but unmistakeable ways) the book would effectively say:

"What are you doing reading this? Reading about zen is like reading a prescription and hoping to get better. Just PRACTICE!!"