Shinshu Blog
Miscellaneous nature-flavored notes from Nagano (信州)
Recent Posts: (Click below to see older posts)
Gōdo no Ō-ichō
Up in the northern reaches of Nagano, where the mountains seem to fold gently around the town of Iiyama, there’s ...
Kame-Mushi: Nature’s Accidental Meteorologist
As I put on the amado storm screens in preparation for winter, I keep discovering the same stubborn little intruders ...
The Last Color on the Branch
Winter in Shinshu arrives with a quiet certainty. The rice fields turn pale and dry, the mountains settle into their ...
Wild Mushrooms and the Forest Calendar
Autumn in Shinshu begins close to the ground, where the damp earth softens and mushrooms begin to rise through the ...
The Ghosts of Silk
When early summer arrives in Japan, sidewalks in many old neighborhoods turn a mottled purple. The stains come from fallen ...
Riding the Gradient of the Season
After a long, gray October in Tokyo—the wettest one I can remember—I finally returned to Shinshu. Usually, October in Japan ...
Mid-October
Mid-October, warm and clear after days of rain. I drive to Arai on my weekly shop, soon crossing the high ...
The Keeper of the Woodpile
It's October and I am sorting out logs in the woodpile—sawing them into lengths to split for the wood stove ...
The Switch Thrown
A perfect summer, the best I'd ever seen here, with unbroken days of blue skies and sunshine, ended abruptly. A ...
