3 weeks to go

I have become a weather watcher: glancing daily at my App, willing the temperatures to come down from the high 20s: Tokyo, Ena, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Kanazawa, Nikkō - 25 to 31 deg C atm (argh!).

I have just finished 'Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells' by Pico Iyer who was born in Oxford to Indian parents but moved to the US when he was 7. He is married to Hiroko and splits his time between Nara in Japan and the US. 

We will visit Nara, so I will ‘channel’ him there 😀.

The book is a ‘gentle’ read with lovely reflections and insights about relationships and life in modern Japan versus post-Hiroshima, interwoven with his observations of Autumn: the reds and coppers of the maple leaves and the changing light.

‘No black-and-white in Japan, since every end marks a new beginning …’

and

‘Autumn poses the question we all have to live with: How to hold on to the things we love even though we know that we and they are dying.’

Lovely isn’t it?

UPDATE:

1 October -  temperatures now below 30 deg C in all the places in Japan that I am ‘following’. 😅