Osakatomebaby

I walked past a sneezing pigeon a few minutes ago. I'm probably going to die of bird flu.

It's a gorgeous day which means that I'm starting to feel a little melancholy. I'm happy all miserable winter and giddy in the sweltering heat of summer. I thrill in the autumn when everything starts to whither and die. But come spring I get melancholy. What is this strange reaction? Something to do with being fair-skinned and Irish? I could belt out a good dirge on a windy cape somewhere in bliss, but strolling under blossoms I feel my shoulders start to hunch. What do you call that? I used to get it all the time, but not in years.

Actually, at the moment I think it's probably due very specifically to th fact that the pretty weather elucidates my inability to partake in it due to pressing obligations (yet here I sit, writing). Moreso, it drives home the fact that I'm living in the concrete jungle.

Well perhaps not, there are well-kep perfectly-trimmed azalias and trees making a comeback from the over-enthusiastic pruning they suffer (branches are fully chopped off at times to maintain the look). But as I walked along, trying to think of the best way to goof off and avoid doing whatever it is that's making me melancholy, I realized I just want to be in Nara. This place is so soulless and I miss Nara. I loved it there even if it was isolated. I could just head to Nara park or walk to Nigatsudo whenever I felt like it and excape.

I know I'm going to move in Japan eventually, and it's expensive and time-consuming to commute and all, but at the moment, I'm feeling very tempted to move to Nara. It's beautiful in the spring and I like living in a tourist town off-season when the weather's cold and gloomy too. If I were in Nara today I'd be sitting by the pond like my friend Jo and I did this day long ago, eating o-bento sushi and doing nothing. As long as I'm giving the old shout-outs Joanna Karukchi (I don't even remember how to spell it, hopeless) if you're out there in the universe, I miss you too, you crazy Warab.

Jo is half-Iraqi and half-Welsh, hence Warab. Lost touch with her after I left Japan and all googling has left me with nothing. Sigh. She would have gone back to London and graduated a pharmaceutical researcher, but I don't know what happened after that, or to her family, if they were in Bagdad or London. London I would imagine but rather a complicated situation.

Oh, heck. I'm going to Nara. I can get there with enough time to say hi to some deer and watch the sun set from Nigatsudo anyway.