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cycling in Autumn

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Today ended with another economics lesson.

It started off slowly enough. I cleaned up the balcony and windows, coming back from the utter mess of dirt and bits of tree deposited by the typhoon last week. That took all morning, and Mari and Kenny went to aerobics.

In the afternoon, we went for a cycle trip to a park we know that actually has green grass and places for small children to run around. Autumn is here for real now, and we wore our light jackets for the first time. And for once, we remembered the frisbee that we bought while in Fukuoka back in January. In all of the times we went to the park, all Summer long, we always forgot the frisbee. But this afternoon, as the sunshine waned, we made Kenny run around in circles chasing the soft foam-rubber thing. Much to our amusement, he'd try to throw it himself, and would smack himself in the face as often as he managed to get it airborne for two or three meters.

Tokyo, as I've said many times, is in the wrong time zone. The Sun comes up well before 05:00 through the middle of the Summer, and even at this time of year the Sun goes down far earlier than it should, at around 17:30. We're really not that far north, here, I wish they'd either introduce Summer Time or simply acknowledge that the country is too big to be on a single time zone and move us an hour earlier. Honestly, who needs sunshine at 04:45? And darkness before dinner at this lattitude?

Deciding that we were a bit too burned out to make dinner, we went to the Rak Thai in Gotanda instead. This is the place where I met my friend Joon for the first time, something that was possible because there were no seats available when I showed up and he offered me the spare chair at his small table. When I told the wait staff the story tonight, they told me that the restaurant simply never got that busy any more! Poor Gotanda has been on such a decline. We were the only ones in there when we finished up around 19:00.

It was a good day, all 'round.