Say Green! Redux

I took the long way home from work today since it was an absolutely spectacular day. As much as I like the look of green on gray, green on blue is even better.







There's a charm to the crowded, congested, back to back layout of Japanese neighborhoods. I enjoy walking through narrow streets and smelling what people are cooking for dinner, and hearing the banter between parents and children inside as I walk by. There's a curiosity about what's going on just on other side of those frosted windows. It can be a bit confining at times, but the proximity of life here becomes suddenly more tolerable in the spring, once the rice paddies are flooded, the frogs start chirping, and the communal farms start to blossom. Not only do these little plots of goodness add some green, but they get the local wildlife all fired up as well. Good stuff.



Every town has it's share of communal farm plots, at least around here, and it seems that at least one of these plots always has a sacrificial van which is slowly being consumed by undergrowth.