Expecting daughter coming home...

This is a special dinner for our daughter coming home tonight. Chirashi Sushi. Cooked rice is mixed with vinegar and various materials. Then fresh raw fish, boiled garden pea and fried egg are put on it.
When adding vinegar to rice, we should blow it with a fan. This is a key point to have rice look shiny.  It was me who mixed them while my wife blew it.  The rice grains on the wall of the wooden bucket doesn't mean we have already eaten it but it was due to mixing.

 

 

This is boiled pumpkin seasoned with sake etc. This pumpkin was a hravest in the garden farm. The other pumpkins were not very successful this year. A bit watery and less sweet. But this one tastes great like chestnut.

 

 

 

All the dishes are ready. But the guest won't show up here.

 

 

 

 

When I called her on the phone, she answered to me with vivid voice from her apartment. Yes, it is next week end when she has planed to come home.

 

 

The issue is whether two of us could finish all the dishes. I should have made less sushi...

Pilgrimage around Shikoku

 

Centuries ago, people have started pilgrimage around Shikoku. It was, they say, after a great teacher in Bhuddism named Kukai who had lived in ascetic discipline in Shikoku district in the 8th century. Pilgrims go around Shikoku worshipping 88 of the temples scattered all over.

 

In the beginning of its history, they say, pilgrims were those who could not live in the homeland due to various reasons, mostly ominous or criminal, or those with serious illnesses. They prayed for their relieves through the pilgrimage. Or they could not live in the other ways than this pilgrimage. Having been supported by people along the roads of pilgrimage, they have walked all the way on their feet. Doing charity for those pilgrims with giving foods, water or even accommodations has been believed  to mean doing something good in Bhuddism. 

 

At present, a number of people, young or old, are still going for this journey. They say most of the modern pilgrims want to know who they themselves are or would regain the power to live after having got tired from their own lives. A part of them still walk all the way on their feet as in old ages. It takes them longer than 2 months to walk through the entire pilgrimage for nearly 700 or 800 miles.

People along the roads are told to be still very helpful to those pilgrims.

 

The pilgrims wear white cloth with a wooden stick on a hand and a straw made hat on head. It was until I had heard about it from a taxi driver in Takamatsu city, one of the largest cities in Shikoku a few years ago, when I knew their dress meant they could die anywhere on the way of pilgrimage. I was almost shocked to hear that there had actually been many pilgrims lost theri lives on the way. The white cloth was for the funeral for themselves. It was not for fun but for a real discipline to look for the reality in life.

 

Recently, I have read a book about this pilgrimage written by a retired journalist. He used to walk all the way in his forties one time. It was for writing an article as a journalist. He said he wanted to walk for pilgrimage itself apart from his profession. He made it true at the age of 70 after retirement. He has described how it moved him through walking in the nature and meeting people on the way. It's a pity, as he said, some roads have been paved and have had much traffic with cars. It has ruined some parts of the pilgrimage. But, in the other portions, the great nature was still preserved and has reminded him of the ancient pilgrims who had walked the same way. He has also described a lot of impressive chance meeting with many people, Bhuddism priests, pilgrims and people doing charity for him. 

 

Giving every routine in my life aside, I would like to go for this journey by myself in the future, not far from now. It might be a good chance to reflect myself and to consider how to live the time left in my life.

 

This photo was taken on a beach in Shikoku, near to my wife's homeland, in this winter. There was a temple for this pilgrimage close to this place.  

 

 

Variation

It's already fall. As I repeated in this blog, the chamber musics of Brahms fit this season. Especially, the last movement of his Clarinet Quintet is worthy of listening to at quiet night in fall.

 

It is a variation. The theme appearing on the strings is really touchy. It could not help making you think of your past. The melody will undergo a variety of changes and will be sung by different instrument in each variation. As a cellist, I should recommend listeners to listen carefully to the 3rd variation which cello sings an impressive melody. In the middle, the mood gets warmer, which reminds me of sunshine in winter before it gets stormy. In the next variation, viola sings a music as if it hastened us to the climax. In the coda, the very beginning theme of the 1st movement is recalled in imperfect manner. Following clarinet climbing to the height in a fashion of cadenza, it descends in the motif of the same 1st movement. This variation is quietly closed with a dreary chord. This ending sounds as if Brahms had reflected his life in this music. When I played this piece with friends of mine in my student days, I always felt that way.

 

The variation is not only a technique in composing music. It rather seems to me like a way of expressing our lives with music. Our lives are a kind of circulation. We live around own center which we, consciously or subconsciously, value on. Even if it appears in different shape, there is a center in our lives. This variation style may express it by music. Brahms has left us great variations as I already mentioned in this blog.

 

 

Fried tomatoes

Yesterday, it lit in my mind when I found unripe green tomatoes on tomatoe plants in the garden farm. I should try fried tomatoes as a few friends in the US have suggested. At first, honestly speaking, I was rather skeptical about that idea. But there are only few chances I could try that menue. I gotta try!

 

As a result, it tasted freshly rich, sweet and slightly sauer. This is it with a few fried sweet potatoes. My wife could not guess what it was. She was surprised to know of that and liked it very much. We knew why some friends of mine had recommended this menue now.

 

 

 

I have prepared fried saury as well. This was also very good.

 

 

Am I talented in cooking? Should I have lived as a chef leaving a paddle and a stethoscope? No, it's not my talent but is thanks to my friends' advice!

 

Actually, I should go for the parttime job not as a chef today.

The latest figures of trees and plants in the garden

It is getting much cooler especially at night here. It is breezy all the day. One of the best seasons in a year. I am getting things tidy in the garden. Weeds and lawn grow slower now. I should pull the former before they shed seeds. Planting fall vegetables is another project:I have already planted radish shown below, lettuce also sprouting, cabbage and spinach. I learned fresh radish harvested in the garden is so good this summer. The growning ones may be good material for saucepan cook late in fall and in winter.

 

I was stimulated by my wife starting taking flute lesson yesterday. I looked for a class for cello lesson and would attend there if it allows me. Completing cello sonata e minor by Btahms is another project. I wonder if time left for me will permit it or not.

 

Fall deepens here in this way.  

 

 

A plum tree with fresh leaves. In the summer, they were once eaten by bugs, which were got rid of with a chemical.  No other ways to do with that nasty bugs.

 

 

A Higan Bana, which stands for the flower in autumnal equinox. It is a bulb flower, which comes out punctually right at this time of equinox every year. Someone dislikes the artificial outlook of this flower. It surely tells, however, the season is coming around and it is the time of pleasant harvest now.

 

 

The radish sprouting in the farm. Lovely, isn't it?

 

 

A zelkova tree in grand outlook in front of my parents' home. It always flourish with so many leaves. My father used to complain it got too dark and damp in the house. But, without it, it was too hot in the daytime in the summer. The leaves will start falling in several weeks.

 

From perception to pleasure

In a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, there was an interesting review as titled above:PNAS Jun 18 2013 vol110 10430-10437.

It discusses of the neuroscientific findings about the mechanism how we get pleasure from music. It says that a cortical loop between temporal auditory areas and frontal cortices is important for memorizing musical information as working memory as well as for recognizing the structural regularities in musical patterns. The latter leads to expectancies of the following note/rhythm.

This review also tells that the mesolimbic striatal system is involved in reward, motivation and pleasure in music as well as the emotional activities. It is mediated by the doperminergic system. the author proposes pleasure in music arises from interactions between cortical loops mentioned above and this subcortical system responsible for reward and valuation.

I sighed deeply how far the neuroscience has gone in research for our mental activities. This reminded of our son studying these voluminous new insights in medicine. There must be much more knowledges medical students are required to be doctors. At the same time, I won't miss some hypothetical logics in these research works. One example is that some research takes sympathetic nerve system phenomena would represent the amount of pleasure, which looked to me too simplistic. Maybe, further studies would confirm or renew these findings. But this review is still stimulating to me at present. The direction the studies are heading to looks promising to me.

I am inpressed at the hypothesis that expectation for the following musical pattern is related with the resulting emotion of reward. They say that it could be a ground of the pleasure in music. The author also mention the parallelism between music and speech in evolution. If I could paraphrase speech to communication by CW, it is what I have thought of pleasure in CW conversation. Refer to this article We expect what will follow after certain conversational content on CW. If it synchronizes with the tempo of thinking, it always intellectually stimulating us. If our expectation goes right, we could be satisfied at that. In this situation, expectation may activate our doperminergic system which leads to the emotion of reward and pleasure as in the case of music perception. I am not sure if we could paraphrase the findings in music to CW conversation. But if it is applicable, there is a reason we compare CW to music as stated here.

The author introduces Darwin's words in his autobiography as follows. "If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibl;y injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeeding the emotional part of our nature." I wonder, as a friend of mine told, if we could replace music to CW conversation in these impressive sentences. If our ancestors in CW conversation have been right in their naming CW as music, it might be not only an accidental idea but must be based on a inherent intuiton.

A real party on the air

A typhoon is coming by here. Lots of rain. Noise due to this rain has been waxing and waning this morning. I have been on 15m this morning, where I was bothered with that noise. I could not grab some weak signals there. Sorry for that. Without that noise, I could have caught them for sure.

 

In BW QSO Party since yesterday, however, I have had very nice chats with old friends. Like Dick K4XU, Vic WA6MCL Jim KF7E or Don WB6BEE. It was a real party on the radio. It is always good for me to renew our friendships. I have met Dick twice in person, Vic once and Don in the near future. I enjoy hearing how they have been doing through QSOs. It is a very simple thing to greet and talk how each of us is getting along but is still so valuable in our lives.

 

It is still raining hard. I quit getting on the radio and will go out for special meal with my wife for her birthday. She is as young as Jim KF7E now. The photo shows our garden through the window of my shack.