- The cherry blossom got off to an early start, but the last couple of weeks of chill slowed it right down and only now are trees starting to show themselves here and there.
- A youngish couple we passed on our way out of Nagoya were obviously Walking. Not just enjoying a stroll, but striding along purposefully, elbows out, their whole bodies radiating “I am Walking”… Apparently you can take “walking” lessons in order to get the full health benefits or something. Later on we passed a whole crowd of mostly middle-aged people doing the same thing. It must have been a special Walking Day.
- Spring means gardening and the shopping centre where we usually stop off on the way was piled with bags of potting compost, fertiliser, chicken manure, lime… Actually it’s time I sowed the chilli seeds to get some seedlings ready to plant in May or June.
- The weather forecasts are quite often right these days! Sunday started warm, but as we were doing our shopping it clouded over, a cold wind got up and shortly after it started to rain – just as predicted.
- We left buying “negi” (leeks) to the “¥100 stand” down the road, but there weren’t any… Luckily the lady who runs it had some in her field, so we went with her to dig a few up. The local deer had been in before us that morning and got a lot of the green part, but we still got a bundle of stalks, which turned out to be very good. I don’t think the deer had been such a problem there until recently (they’ve been plagueing us for years) so I think she’d better fix that high net that should have been keeping them out.
- On Monday it snowed.
Min temp -2.5°C, max 16.5°C
asazuke 