ENOUGH TO BE AN ISLAND

Out on the Lake there is a tiny island just a few meters wide, on days like today sitting on the surface like a thick, dark cookie on a silverblue baking sheet. I've passed close by it on boats and am always surprised by its tininess-- it seems to grow bigger in the mind.

I have also seen at the Lake Biwa Museum, in a scale geological model of the Lake bed, how that mini-island - like most of the larger islands that dot the Lake - is but the point of a tall needle of once-liquid volcanic rock, eons ago thrust upward from the core of the earth, reaching now through far deeps of water to barely touch the surface enough to be an island. Likely the island was once much higher than the cookie it is now, and will disappear below the surface before too geologically long. These molten facts are reflected in the mountains around the Lake, which comprise the timeworn caldera of an ancient volcano.

Most days that little island, because of its size, is invisible; even the slightest haze or shadow of cloud erases it, to say nothing of water-reflected light. But on certain rare days like today, when water, air and light combine in just the right way, the Lake appears to end about halfway across, as natural currents turmoil the near waters and tranquilize the far, and there the island appears: not atop the water, like the usual island, but floating in the sky, high above the apparent surface of the Lake.

If I didn't know the true distance to the far shore, that floating island would be as inexplicable as any other miracle around here.

OPERATING THE LOBSTER

To be perfectly honest, I've never even thought of operating a giant lobster-- who can perceive all the possibilities that life lays out before us? But when I saw that giant lobster sitting there, my inner child leaped at the prospect. Regrettably though, my outer adult was too big to fit into the crustacean. But then I've never thought about not fitting into a lobster either, so the disappointment was small one.

I'm speaking of the new Nephropida across the water, in that special section of the fantastic Lake Biwa Museum called the "Discovery Room," where kids can go unattendedly wacko while their parents collapse nearby.

Yes, in the Discovery Room there is now a giant lobster you can physically go inside of and, while looking out through the lobster's mouth, manipulate the levers in there to operate the giant claws and snap up a praying mantis bigger than my forearm, or a 20-pound pollywog - both at once, if you can swing it - those dainties are dangling temptingly right out there in front of your big bulbous eyes, just within reach of those long heavily jointed chitinous arms extending out from your spiny red carapace, deep in the imaginary sea where so much of the world's fun resides.

When we brought the grandgirls to the Museum on Sunday, Kaya headed straight for the lobster and got in line behind all the boys until at last she got to direct the beast, caught a loach or two and snagged a pollywog, but soon burned out on the deeper potential of the thing - sure it's cool, said her look, but lobster interest fades - she wandered off; then each of the twins had a go at the lobster, with about the same result. Of course they're totally children at this point in their lives, with quite a while to go before they begin to acquire their own outer adults and the restrictions/perspective that affords; still, their actions were a surprise to both of me.

Yes, the girls quickly gave up wielding those giant spiked arms with the gnarly grabbing claws at the ends!! They wandered off, stuck their heads up inside the fish tank and stuff like that, made some yarn pictures on the yarn boards, but their hearts weren't in those activities any more than they had been in the lobster.

As far as I could tell, their hearts kept pretty much out of it until they found, over in a far corner, the traditional Japanese kitchen of a hundred years or so ago, where they could do trad stuff like "slice" "daikon" and other "vegetables" etc. with a "hocho" (traditional Japanese kitchen knife) and put them in a big iron pot over a "fire" in an old-fashioned irori (fireplace) to make a nabe (stew type meal) for "dinner," and you couldn't tear the girls away from there, they made dinner over and over, fascinated at slicing not-even-real radishes with a not-even-real hocho, one twin at the edge of the girl-crowded space complaining initially to Kasumi that there was no room in the kitchen: “Mama, there's no room for me to make a nabe!”

While gazing upon that comfortingly homish scene, my outer adult couldn't help but be aware of his inner child's powerful desire to sneak away from this girl stuff and work that lobster big time.

Museums are there to teach us of the amazing aspects there are to the world and to ourselves. The lesson here appears to be that somewhere back in the history of girls there is warmth, there is comfort, there is nurturing; whereas somewhere back in the history of boys there is a giant lobster.

Which gets harder to operate as we get older.