Grey settles over the Glen

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Toru and I have been living together almost 25 years.

Only recently I noticed that he has this weird thing about small plates. Now, I don’t mean small servings—those are normal size—it’s just the plates themselves that are weensie.

He will take a look at the meal he plans to serve and then choose the smallest plate that can just barely fit the food within its diameter. Like we will have breakfast with some eggs, a few strips of bacon, a small serving of veggies, and a piece of toast, and it will all somehow come on a plate that can barely fit some after-dinner mints.

The bacon is stacked up into a pile—side by side would suck up way too much real estate. The eggs are nudged into the right bottom half of the plate, almost over the edge, the toast is perched something like a see saw on top of the eggs, and the veggies are down there underneath everything else. (You will find them eventually.)

This isn’t because we lack normal plates. No, we have stacks of normal sized dinner plates. But my breakfast will come on a plate the size of a ‘45 single.

I asked him once about this. He said something about the dishwasher, but I call B.S. The dishwasher is plenty big for adult-sized plates. Instead, only a quarter loaded, the dishwasher is switched on with two eensy plates that look like they came with a child’s play tea time set, a few forks, a spatula, a fry pan, and some cups.

Maybe all this comes from the Japanese bento box sensibility. Tiny little compartments, each stuffed with neatly arranged bites, and not a rice grain’s worth of unused space.

He once asked me if I’d like to share a corn on the cob with him as an afternoon snack. “Woof!” I said.

My half arrives, precariously balanced on one of his Illy brand espresso cup saucers. The diameter of this saucer was precisely the length of the half cob, not one micron more.

It’s rainy season now in Japan. If you’ve never experienced an Asian rainy season, think drizzle, drips, and oozy ground… but few storms.

It is simply wet. Like…always. The skies are grey and heavy . The clouds mist and drip on you, and the air is thick to breathe. Your shoes start to smell. The genkan where of course your smelly wet shoes are kept starts to smell. Your house soon smells.

You sweat, but it’s not in summer beads. Maybe it’s more of a passive stew/perspire, like a bottle of beer taken from the fridge and set out on the counter.

Nights are not hot, but there is a stickiness. You and the bed are sticky, of course, but the nightstand and the floorboards are too. The sheet—likely you’re using only one by June—clings. When you move in bed there is an unpleasant squeaking noise as your clammy skin moves against the fabric.

Crispiness, in the air, in the sheets, in life overall is gone.

Today I walked Terashima-kun the whippet. The morning was grey and heavy—of course. I noticed that not only is rainy season clammy, it is also full of bugs.

And they’re hungry. Or I’d say enthused.

Can insects be described as overly self-confident? It’s almost a kamikaze phase they’re in this time of year. Face it, when Japan is peak insect, these guys are getting killed by the billions day after day. They’re getting mercilessly powdered and sprayed by the Japanese, stomped by the foreigners, hoovered by thousands of natural predators, pureed by car windshields. It’s all hopeless, yet in waves they just keep coming.

Happy warriors, these guys.

So Tera and I were crossing the rice paddies. Skeeters were buzzing past our faces, little gnat-y moths were everywhere, and I could hear crickets and other croaky things in the mud and rice paddies in Surround Sound about us.

There’s one black bug that often travels in small clouds with friends. I’m desperately frightened of them. They don’t look vicious but my legs have learned better. These guys don’t just bite, they gnaw. And they leave behind red welts that last for weeks…even with steroid cream liberally applied.

The bugs look like a cross between a tiny black wasp and a moth. You can see they are feather light—I think that’s part of their danger. When they land on you and start feasting, you have no idea they’re there busy with breakfast.

Tera and I ran through a few clouds of these this morning. Going around them was not an option. Even though I had sprayed both of us pre-walk with Japanese-level insect repellant (basically DDT), I wasn’t willing to trust the promised efficacy. I ran the whippet and once cleared of the clouds of feather-light wasp/moths, carefully checked both of us for a lingerer.

There was none. Then I checked again.

I need to learn the Japanese name for these monsters. Something tells me every farmer out here knows precisely what these thirsty marauders are called.

As we walked the paddies today, I was listening to Bob Dylan’s eponymous debut album. I don’t have earphones so music just plays in my pocket out my iPhone’s speakers.

He sounds like a 65-year old West Virginian folk singer on this, croaking and strumming outside some coal mining town’s watering hole. What was with this guy? He was like 19…

Feeling funny in my mind, Lord, I believe I’m fixin’ to die
Well, I don’t mind dyin’, but I hate to leave my children crying

Chalamet did a few verses of “Fixin’ to Die” in that recent bio-pic. I thought, what a brilliant choice but out of this man’s whole pre-1965 catalog? This?

Pull this up on Spotify if you haven’t heard it before. Dylan howls like a man who really is fixing to die…reason unstated. The weirdo was like 19.

I don’t know why I’m telling you about this song. I played it three times during our walk and it somehow fit. I was actually feeling the opposite of ‘fixin’ to die,’ feeling fresh, happy to be out in the Glen, but the song somehow fit the views of the morning walk. Maybe it was the grey mist of the day.

I noticed something while crossing a patchwork of paddies. You likely have seen many pics and videos of white cranes. You see them in gorgeous gliding flight or picking through marshlands on long spindly legs as they quietly stalk mud critters. We see this a lot out here.

But I noticed a weird thing they also regularly do, even when crouched down and invisible in a thick paddy or field. When they hear you coming, when the alarm bells go off to say a foreigner practicing his Dylan howl, they pop up and stick their bright white heads and necks right out of the green.

Imagine a field of fronds, one monotone deep green—you’re feeling quite alone—and out comes a snow white head, beady eyes, and a long, long (yummy and exposed) white neck.

At first alarm we humans are taught, “Get down!” “Duck and cover!” To disappear and shut up.

The last thing we do is stick our necks up and out for inspection. If we had evolved anything like cranes, I don’t think we would still be here.

When I was a kid in California, we practiced what we were told were “earthquake drills.” Even mid-lesson say, the teacher would unexpectedly turn to the class and yell, “Quake Quake Quake.” We were to immediately fall under our tables on hands and knees, crouched into tiny defensive balls. We were told, lastly, to clasp our hands over the back of our exposed necks.

Now that, Mr. Crane, is how you do it.