Cool weather, cool hair

In an airport bus at Tokyo Haneda.

Housewife on a mountain top

Here in Japan (or perhaps is it better to say "in the japanese countryside", since I'm not sure that it is the same in Tokyo or Osaka), almost all housewifes wear an apron dress (is this the right word?) during their household work.
And most of them even wear it even when they leave the house for shopping. I did not yet understand why - perhaps to show that they don't stroll around for pleasure, but for carrying out their household's duties?
But it was really for the first time the other day that I saw a lady wearing her "uniform" even on the top of a mountain!

The year of the rice (2)

Here I showed already some photos of the japanese yearly rice growing cycle, but the nicest chapter- summer - was still missing. So here it is.

The rice is quickly growing now,

makes spikes,

and these strings are supposed to chase away the hungry sparrow, waiting all the year long for this moment:

Big butterfly in a mountain forest

The sky over Kitakami...

... has something of a giant spiderweb. In some towns, they start now to put all those cables into the earth when refurbishing the streets, but here in Kitakami, they don't seem to feel an urgent need for this.

Big earring

Drummer girl at the Kitakami summerfestival; she just looked so bored!

Blue mountains

The mountains between the Akita and Iwate prefectures, on a hazy summerday.

From where the cicada hatched out

These days, we find these guys under many trees.

Japanese gardens (2)

This is one of these traditional japanese gardens you can see here quite often, necessitating much work and being only contemplated - you will never see anybody sitting there in a canvas chair and reading a book or just relaxing. The couple owning this garden has a second one, a big vegetable garden just in front of our house, where they cultivate all kinds of vegetables from April to November.
As if they were afraid of running out of gardening work.

Can you discern it?

Big japanese cicada on a cherry tree.

These fellows are making so much noise, you won't belief it!

Soy plants struggling for their life

... fighting with lots of bad weeds.

And finally they lost the battle, the weeds are triumphantly flowering.

Japanese gardens (1)

In this typical japanese vegetable garden, everything is caged, even the flowers.