STARSTRUCK

Yesterday, Kaya was taken by her other grandfather to see a planetarium. Mitsuki and Miasa were envious as double five-year-olds when they heard about Kaya's pending good time, but then they were told that they were coming to our house for the afternoon and evening, and their envy waned a bit; at least we have different toys, plus we live on a mountain.

When they got here we told them we were taking them to a concert. They'd apparently heard of the word, and seemed excited at the prospect. (What did 'concert' mean to them? What does a five-year old twin female expect from a ‘concert’? How do you ask such questions of a 5-year-old twin female?)

When all the travelly stuff was ready we took them down along the lake, around the mountain and into the beautiful narrow valley on the other side from us, where we drove the curving road in the deep shade along the lazy mountain stream until we found a good spot, went down to the stream bank and the twins went out of the hot day into the clear mountain water for a cool swim, enjoyed picking up larger and larger rocks from the bottom and tossing them further out, making the biggest splashes possible all over themselves and effecting their changes in the general layout of the universe, then after an hour or so of waterfun they toweled off and we went on to the concert, which was just down the road.

The ‘Haruya’ family, whom I've mentioned herein a few times, the most natural and simply living family I know in these parts (e.g., none of their three sons goes to school, they are home-schooled, extremely rare in Japan) (I have a lot of great stories about the family I should get to herein sometime). They live in a traditional Japanese village house in one of the small villages along that river. For their livelihood, in addition to occasionally serving excellent reservations-only meals in their home, restaurant-fashion, they travel around the country to various ecoevents where they sell delicious home-made organic ready-to-eat foods. As well, they are movers and shakers in a lot of the events that happen over in their valley neighborhood and elsewhere. They are also a rock/folk band, and were going to play the first set of the concert, starting at 4pm.

The twins knew none of these details, and seemed unusually quiet sitting right in the front row before a stage that was the deck of a rustic farmhouse up inside the edge of the woods. There were a lot of kids running around (almost all boys), but the twins stayed fascinated before the stage, watching the band set up; then the performance began. The Haruya band, Yamamoto 844 (mother on piano, father on lead guitar, sons on vocals and drums; another woman on bass, her two sons helping with the vocals). Five boys in total, from 5-8 years old, did the vocals in the first song. The Haruya folks’ three sons, 8, 5 and 2, took turns playing the drums during their set. Believe it or not, the 2-year-old did a responsibly credible job on the drums-- he stayed seated, pounding now and then, and finished with a big satisfying crash on the cymbals.

During the set, I was watching the twins now and then to see how they were taking all this; was it too noisy? Totally bizarre? Was it their first actual concert? They were too busy watching to answer silly questions; they never moved from the bench, sat there eating their snacks and drinking their cold tea, eyes locked on the performance.

After the first couple of songs, the oldest brother, 8, became the main vocalist and really belted out the tunes. During the closing song, Mitsuki kept pulling at Echo's sleeve and saying something, but Echo couldn't hear clearly because of the volume, so she just nodded. After the song ended, Mitsuki said Sonno hito wa kakkoii... Mitsuki sukii desu! Which situationally translates as: That guy is really cool... I like him! She wanted his autograph.

Echo went over and found him behind the stage with his friends, horsing around like an 8-year-old, and persuaded him to come and give his autograph to one of those cute twins over there (seems it was his first autograph, and he was uncharacteristically a bit shy about it). He came over in his Grateful Dead bear t-shirt, and in his immediate presence it was clear that Mitsuki, who had just turned five a few days ago, had a major crush on this guy nearly twice her age. He signed his name in normal-sized letters. Echo asked him to sign it BIG; he did. Mitsuki held the paper with just the tips of her fingers, like a basically untouchable treasure.

As the sun was setting and the featured group was setting up for its session late into the night, before leaving (we had to meet Kasumi at home around 7) we went over to where the Haruya family was now selling their foods, and told the boy's mother about what had happened. She said to her son, who was there helping out, why don't you draw her a picture of a samurai on the paper? (He loves drawing and Japanese history, so draws a lot of historic figures). He took the paper, M&M following, and went over to an outdoor worktable of plywood over sawhorses and began to draw. The twins watched in close fascination; he joked, they laughed. I took some pictures. His 5-year-old brother came over. Echo said That doesn't look like a samurai. The younger brother said It isn't a samurai; it's Napoleon. Napoleon? said Echo; It doesn't look like Napoleon, either. It’s Napoleon the third, said the home-schooled 5-year-old.

When we got home, Napoleon III in his own special folder, Mitsuki commandeered Echo to write a fan letter, inviting her crush to “come by Shinkansen and stay at my house and go to a restaurant where we can have spaghetti, pizza and dessert.” Echo asked who else would go on the date; Miasa said I'll go! Mitsuki said His mother, my mother, and Miasa.

Then she carefully colored his drawing of Napoleon III and gave it in its folder to Echo to keep for her, put a bunch of her own drawings and newly learned writings in the envelope with the letter for Echo to give to her one and only.

That's Mitsuki in the last photo, holding the paper...

Five years old...

STAG PARTY

My apologies for the spaced-out quality of this brief ramble, I'm no judge of quality today, is this the right language? I hardly got a wink of sleep what with all the deer noise last night. From as soon as the lights went out until the sun came up it was one big stag party out there, with ladies attending. I kept expecting the loud clatter of horn against horn, but I guess the Baron has the harem all to himself. I saw him out-antlering a couple of young wannabe usurpers a month or two ago, but even though he was the only stag at this party, the ladies still gave him a run for his money. (Interesting inter-species use of idiom)

The Baron was courting all night outside my window and everywhere else around the house, where I'd hear at first, in a low whisper (I understand deer Japanese) "Hey, babe, where are you?" Then a demure "Over here, Buck!" Followed at once by a clatter of hooves over stone, a rustle of low branches and "Babe, where'd you go?" "I'm over here now, Buck!" and so on, all night. The imminent prospect of sex is never tiring, at least for the participants.

Just as I'd fall asleep hooves would the pound on the road, then there'd be a doe-ish giggle over in the field, followed by an eight-legged round-and-round through the oak trees, the bamboo, the hedges, my garden, over and among my firewood as I tossed and turned, repeatedly plucked from imminent dreams by a yearning stag call that resembled air squeaking out of a balloon and ending in a bleat from an oogah horn.

How any female would yield her charms in response to that type of endearment (note avoided pun) I can't imagine, and judging by the extent of the chasing, the ladies didn't, really, till they just got too worn out to say no, which was about the time I had finally given up and gotten up, and was making my tea. It was quiet from then on.

The deer were racked out in the bamboo after their exhausting night; I had to go to work after mine.

Anyway, come Spring we'll get to see the golden, gawky, big-brown-eyed results.

HAWK IN LOVE: MOVE CAR

Last evening I was driving home when I noticed in the dim light of the rear view mirror something that looked like two straps hanging down from the interior ceiling rack in the back. I made a mental post-it to straighten that jumble out in the morning.

True to my note, in the morning I went out and opened the side door of the van, got in and reached to put the straps back in their places, at which point I found out there were no straps hanging down: it was something on the outside of the back window.

I got out, went around to the back and there observed in the morning sunlight that it was two impressive streaks of bird contribution. Just a bit of bad synchronicity. So I got out the hose and the long-handled car brush and began to scrub away what by this time was more like stucco. It ran from the roof down to the bumper! Then I got out the ladder to get at the roof part of the mess and when I got up where I could see the whole roof, it was like looking at the floor of Jackson Pollock's studio.

Turns out that during hawk courtship time, one of the taloned romeos had taken as his love perch - whence he sang his heartfelt laments to the seductively spiraling Mae Wests of his species - the long bare branch that shoots out from one of the tall hinoki trees in front of the house, right above our open-air garage. This effectively transformed our pristine red van into a hawk outhouse.

So I hosed and scrubbed the whole roof until it was as shiny red as the rest of the van, which took quite a while, but since I was up there... I myself was in no danger of a direct contribution, now that hawk courting is over for the season, but looking at the branch I could see that from that high up, and from that large a bird with that large a contribution, the impact upon the car roof must have been considerable, which explained the decidedly Pollock effect... and was that the strange distant booming I'd been hearing last week, that I thought might be a hearing problem?

Anyway, now I have to make another note to myself, on a large, long-term mental post-it: "Hawk in love: move car."

BRADY TALKS HAWK

These Spring days, the hawks grace the air in high blue romance, the males gliding, squealing and whirling around demurely spiraling but attentive females, the way love soars in wide-winged feathered beings.

Speaking of being, while I was out splitting wood late yesterday afternoon (after double-digging a new garden bed and transplanting some overgrown potted herbs into the soil) I heard a hawk who, at the end of his own days' labors, was majestying atop a pole over by the road, scanning his vast hawkdom and singing his heart out for love, like a feathered troubador. Maybe I was prompted by my exchange in Warbler the other day, but I figured I might as well see if I could get the big feathered being to converse, so I gave Hawk a try.

To anyone acquainted with it, Hawk is a difficult language; Warbler is a lyric breeze in comparison. Hawks work over long distances, so they start off piercingly loud (and far-reaching) at a high pitch and then go higher, the note thinning yet widening somehow, with an even higher-pitched and very difficult vibrato curlicue added at the end. The note is hard, but the vibrato is really tough, not only because the note goes so high and then flattens and widens, but because while whistling that note you have no oral room to move, so have to make the vibrato with your diaphragm, which is at counterpurposes to whistling, to get the whole thing just right.

Hawks have been doing it all their lives, but I just started, so I gave it a couple of feeble tries and garnered no attention other than what might have been a hawkish chuckle. After a while, though, I at least got into the vibrato ballpark, and my general pronunciation didn't seem too bad, but the hawk, who, if I was getting it right, should be needle-eyeing me as a competitor, instead turned and looked at me funny, pulling his head back from his shoulders, like 'What the-- Who the hell-- Was that noise YOU?' Must have been my accent. I tried a few more times, but he could take no more and flew away-- shaking his head, if I'm not mistaken. I tried to whistle my apologies in accented Hawk, but he did not respond.

In further proof of my failure at mastering the wide-winged language, not a single female hawk cruised by to check out this cool dude with the interesting east coast accent. A good thing, too; I wasn't feeling the slightest tinge of feathered romance. Which lack, now that I think about it, probably doomed my effort from the start.

Made wood chopping kind of high and airy, though.