a present from our cousins

saturday was an odd day - it was sunny and cloudless yet you couldn't see the mountains which are so much a dominating part of the skyline on a nice day. the sky wasn't as blue as usual either but I threw the observation away as I travelled on the train and didn't give it too much more thought due to there being so much change in the air these days. it's funny that even the change in temperature can surprise you every year.

I caught up with an aussie friend that night and we talked about the city walks we'd taken this week - his on that day - and got onto the subject of the odd climate. both of us recognised each other's description's of haze and poor visibility but still relatively new to asian (and him, northern hemisphere) meteorology we put it down to pollution. or something.

we caught up with some other people for hanami on sunday and the big aussie and myself got chatting to yuka. "oh thats the sand from the gobi coming over" says she - like everyone knew. although i had experienced the sahara off-loading much of it's sand on the canary islands (and later - the atlantic ocean and even the america's), I had forgotten about the big expanse of desert in china. none of my geography teachers were ever that interested in asia for some reason and for that reason my ability to draw a detailed map of asia with every country (not even in place) is akin to that of a typical japanese being able to do the same task for europe.

the japanese call the wind 'kosa' and I had no doubt that the particles I had looked at on saturday, as I was literally blown of my feet at the train station, were part of the annual present from our cousin on the mainland with whom we don't really speak. as japanese politicians seem to spend so much of their time arguing over land (allbeit tiny outcrops in the pacific) I find it interesting that nature just picks parts of itself up and spreads it around.

I guess people only get interested if it's oil or bird flu or something.

and then we went back to looking at the dachunds in their adidas gear and skirts, darting between the cherry blossom, yapping like they didn't have a care in the world.