Fudo Myo-O

checking the mirror - the wrinkles of Fudo Myo-O

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Click photos for LINK to the originals.



My special friend !
O-Fudo-Sama, Fudo Myo-O




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autumn wind

秋風に吹かれて笑う地蔵かな akikaze ni fukarete warau Jizoo kana his smiling face in the autumn wind - Little Jizoo blown by autumn wind he is simply smiling ... the little wayside god

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The first fresh breeze after a hot day, finally!
Autumn is here in my valley!
It is a feeling of joy and relief that the hot and humid summer is over,
but
on the other side, it is a reminder of harder times to come soon, winter looming ...

akikaze, wind of autumn, carries a lot of meaning ...



Wind in various KIGO !


Jizoo Bosatsu (Kshitigarbha) 地蔵菩薩 and haiku




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dreaming butterflies

dreaming to be reborn in paradise ... winter butterflies

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Chuang Tzu dreamed that he was a butterfly.
All day long, he floated on the breeze
Without a thought of who he was or where he was going.

When he awoke, Chuang Tzu became confused.

"Am I a Man”, he thought, "who dreamed that I was a butterfly?
Or am I butterfly, dreaming that I am a man?
Perhaps my whole waking life is but a moment in a butterfly's dream!.

This is a story of transformation."

Butterfly and Haiku


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Thanks to carol raisfeld for the inspiration !
HH, Members Only




Winter butterfly, a KIGO


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Early Morning

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autumn morning -
a whiff of perfume from
last night's dream




morning fog -
a heron fades in
.... fades out



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On my way uphill to the mailbox, in splendid white invisibility ...

This heron, first his voice in the void, then the sound of wings, then a swish of body, sound of wings, voice in the void ..


How many haiku have been written about this cliché ? I wonder ..
And yet, when it happens, it is breathtaking !



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. Heron (aosagi) Egret (shirasagi) . 　　





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Sea of Clouds

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my sea of clouds -
so many friends left
in memories




for the friends of the Haiku Hut !


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another fine autumn morning at GokuRakuaAn.

Sea of Clouds 秋の雲海、2005　Autumn




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Globalization

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globalization -
he serves the sushi fish
on french bread


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I am talking about Japanese food here, not Haiku !


click the smiley, grin ...


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This kind of SUSHI is maybe my own invention.

Since my husband's diet is without rice in the evening, we started placing the delicious sushi fish cuts from the local store on french bread ... and well ... it tastes great. I love the red caviar (ikura) best!


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Gabi, to me sushi means fish, which makes the word "fish" redundant.
But I may be wrong. (I do prefer the rhythm without "fish.")

a friend

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Dear friend

here is Japan, they put a lot of things on sushi rice (rice cooked with vinegar, sumeshi 酢飯), maybe I can pick up the details up later ...

cucumbers or aubergines or other vegetable, sorts of omelette and egg stuff (they cook it with a bit of sugar, it is a wee bit sweet)

raw chicken or raw horse meet (yes!!) with lots of wasabi for the faint of heart ...

other types of seafood of any kind like mussles and shripms ... and so on.




We usually buy an item called .. cut fish pieces for sushi rice .. at a special fish store and put it on the french bread, my husband is on a diet, but we do without most of the other ingredients.

Enjoy Japanese food and Japanese culture and Haiku on the sideline !

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Thanks for the information, Gabi.
To New Yorkers "sushi" means pretty much a way of preparing raw fish.
But, then, to New Yorkers, "haiku" means a light or humorous verse arranged in three lines of 5, 7, 5 syllables, e. g., "Haikus for Jews," "Haikus for Gays," "Haiku U."


The Conclusion of this discussion:
Raw Fish: Sashimi and Sushi

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And, Gabi, American definitions of "haiku" are still another story.
Your friend

... ... agreed, agreed, my dear American friend!


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Incense

burning incense - the different smell of the last puff show me the secret of your smell - last puff of incense

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Incense, a topic for haiku !



Before you start worrying, the above poem is not a haiku (no kigo) and not a senryu (no irony or humour).
It is simply a zappai 雑俳 in my Japanese classification sceme.



KIGO HOTLINE
Incense, a topic for haiku ??? A discussion begins ...




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Haiku Hut

summer's end - a new beginning at Haiku Hut

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http://www.haikuhut.com/

http://www.michaelrehling.com/



I will dedicate this page to you, Mike san, it was inspired from comments in the HH!

END OF A SEASON and related KIGO !

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summer's end

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my summer's end
"you are going to need
a hearing aid"


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Haiku are best with a kigo, just one of them.

Season coming to an end many related kigo !



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Alzheimer

autumn with alzheimer - she breaks the bread .. ... .. carefully

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World Alzheimer's Day
September 21




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crows

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early morning -
the crows are discussing
ripe persimmons



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and they do that right on my rooftop!



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Furu Ike Ya

a hot pond - and then he jumps in, the naked human

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. my PHOTO ALBUM .


At a Hot Spring in Northern Japan, 20 years ago ...
It was destructed much later in an earthquake and has now been reconstructed, in a modern fashion ...



Some older Japanese reference



comment from a friend:
... your haiku demonstrates a good use of punctuation, something that's hard for me to know when to use in one.
Thanks.

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古池や蛙飛び込む水の音
furuike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto

. mizu no oto 水の音 - discussion .



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Morning Fogg

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whiteout ... and then
the fogg dissolves
in pure sunshine




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The first view from my window was a pure white ... absolutely NOTHING to be seen !




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Cat on roof

summer's end - my cat still high on the hot tin roof

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She is trying to catch some of the crows which sit on the topmost gables.
This was the first time we saw her up there ... wondering about the way back down ... but she made it.




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Persimmon leaf

柿落葉　気温はまだ　三十二 kaki ochiba kion wa mada sanjuu ni fallen persimmon leaf - today's high is thirty two

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There has been a bit of discussion on the FALLEN LEAVES as kigo for all winter.


Why are fallen leaves a kigo for winter in Japan?


This photo was taken in September. Thirty two 32℃ ... I am used to the European way of expressing it in centigrade. It is summer when the temperature goes over 30℃. Other parts of Japan were even hotter that day !



Global warming, climate changes and related haiku topics

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some comments

HI Gabi,
I really like this juxtaposition with the references to global warning and your photo.

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Ah dear Gabi,
global warming has changed everything and it is good that you are noting that. Bravo!

'At thirty two' makes me think that it is your age, not the temperature. Maybe 'of thirty two'? Or put the temperature first?

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Gabi,
global warming may have us all revising our saijiki.

Thanks for all you do.

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autumn sunset

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autumn sunset - reflections in a broken bicycle mirror autumn sunset - a late butterfly hurries from flower to flower (Dedicated to an OLD friend, who is still chasing the girls ...)

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Firts version:

autumn sunset -
reflections in a broken
mirror


A friend suggested these first two lines

sunset
in a broken mirror


but this states something different from what I was trying to show the reader.


the general scene and mood is
............................. autumn sunset -

(I hope you can see the cut at the end of the line 1.) but then we have

reflections (of something xyz not stated ) in a broken
mirror


xyz could be ... my wrinkled face
(I make this up, it was not what I saw )


In my experience, XYZ was a raven hanging upside down over the almost ripe yellow rice fields. Someone must have broken a bicycle mirror or something by the roadside ...


That would be too much to tell in the haiku.
I wanted the reader to find out for him/herself what can be reflected in a broken mirror in his own life situation on an autumn evening ...


Still, I make it "bicycle mirror" to give you a lead ...

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More comments

nice moment to capture here ... i find the lines a little well used ..
I do like the moment you are reaching for

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Gabi, the first one is nice, but I LOVE your second one.

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Your second version is very nice haiku , Gabi san
I agree ,,, the "bicycle" added clarity and depth to the poem...

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autumn sunset -
reflections in a broken
bicycle mirror

maybe state simply:

pieces of mirror
reflect upside down --
a crow above ripe rice

Gabi san, I tried to put it all into that tight HAIKU sack...

pieces of mirror (imply a broken mirror)
reflect upside down -- (general characteristics of a reflection)
a crow above ripe rice (what you actually saw... ripening rice is too long so I fudged a little time with the kigo "ripe rice")


I see this from your explanation, but, the HAIKU may need or needs a tweak... probably less is more?

I left off "bicycle" as this is speculation... but that's just my take.

Also:

rippening rice -- (kigo)
a raven's image
in pieces of mirror

rippening rice --
an upside down raven
in a piece of mirror

Well... I could tweak more... but why have all the fun... LOVE this scene, Gabi san, reminds me of walking with Etsuko san at Gakurakuan along the country roadside in the afternoon... or was that morning?

keigu

.. Whow, Chibi san, you have been brainstorming !

I guess my story leads toward a haibun, to explain it all properly ... and then continues with the dead wild boar piglings (how do you call them in English? uribo) they hang them upside down too, one on each corner of the paddy, to hope the smell will scare other boars off from stealing the rice ... that is rural japan, before the advent of electric fencing ... and even with it, right here ...

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very interesting how you wrote the word longer!

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Read my SUNSET Haiku



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sea of clouds

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the sea of clouds
in the morning sun -
namu amida butsu




The first sea of clouds in the new autumn sunshine !



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feeling better

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feeling better -
a spider's web on the
blood pressure meter








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Typhoon Number Nine

強い台風9号

A typhoon moving towards Japan was forecast on Wednesday to hit a region near Tokyo later in the week and bring heavy rains and strong winds to the capital.

Typhoon Fitow, which means "beautiful fragrant flower" in a Micronesian language, was located about 600 km (375 miles) south of Tokyo and moving northwest at 15 kph (9.4 mph) as of 7am EDT on Wednesday, Japan's Meteorological Agency said.

Bringing with it winds gusting up to 126 kph (78 mph), the storm was forecast to approach the island of Hachijojima, about 300 km (190 miles) south of Tokyo, by Thursday morning, the agency said.


.. http://www.google.co.jp/TYPHOON

Ohaga ... Michi no Eki: TYPHOON SEASON 2007-

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dragonflies

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sunset -
a thousand dragonfly wings
over the paddies

They seem to have come out all at once !
The reflection of the late sunshine on all these wings is just fascinating !





dragonfly wings -
whispering the words of
an old love song







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Dragonfly (tombo, tonbo) Japan KIGO




an argument :

... not to use the numeral 'thousand', that would be untrue because you couldn't have counted them?!!

Well

We were sitting on the terrasse when the dragonflies suddenly showed up below us in the rice fields.

My husband said: "There must be a thousand!", So I added (an old joke of us):
"Why not count the wings and divide the number by four?"


Comments of some friends at HH.

Easy to visualize, Gabi, but I agree with xxx san on this one. (Only because I've received similar comments! )
You might want to find another way of showing the number, rather than counting them. Then again, this may simply be a haiku for your own 'memory bank' and be perfectly fine for the purpose!

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Love the image, Gabi san!
I did a bit of research...found a few cases where "a thousand" is used...perhaps it's accepted as a "round number"?

2 on this page: (in the "notebook" section)
http://www.asahi.com/english/haiku/070319.html


2nd place poem:
http://sakura.ua.edu/haiku_contest_winners_1998.htm

An interesting topic!

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i took the thousand to be the kind of exaggeration one uses in the moment ... wonder, disbelief, tautology ... and so on ...

i tend to use a million ...

i hesitated at the wings ... i thought to myself why not dragonflies ... why dragonfly wings ... but ... it does work !

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"Like" one-thousand.. . . . . . . . . . . .

works for me. BTW, english is a non-literal language sometimes, and also sometimes breaks its own "rules". re:

" haiku rules! "

versus

" haiku-rules"

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Hi Gabi,
I like both versions very much...the 'thousand' and the 'old love song'..lovely.

P.S. Hate to make you jealous, but I had no mosquitos this year up on the 6th floor in the city!

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Yes! Yes! Yes! What sparkling silences you tell !!

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Whether or not to use a thousand, a million or just say many, a lot ...
I prefer to use the numbers, a million stars in the sky ... even if it is quite a cliche. Something you can not count, well, you just can not count.

There is no special guideline in Japanese for this type of vocabulary use, as far as I am aware of.

We also have Ten thousand (man, ban 万) in Asia, an expression dating back to the Chinese T'ang Dynasty. It signifies a long time, usually eternity.
BANZAI 万歳, ten thousand years, is a common cheer　in Japan.

GABI

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Here are some more of my Dragonfly Haiku :
Vaughn Seward's haikuworkshop:
The Dragonfly Haiku Series


At www.wonderhaikuworlds.com


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Threatening Clouds

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threatening clouds
in the darkening sky -
and then this FLASH



Right in front of my nose, an unexpected lighning struck the bamboo grove on the other side of the valley, and an immediate thunder brought it all to vibrate in a hellish symphony



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old farmer

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battling weeds -
the old farmer sprays poison
on his fields


At age 82, he is too weak now to plant anything on the large fields and can not even keep up with cutting the weeds regularly, so today he and his old wife took the great poison spray buckets and sprayed his former fields.

This will be his final battle, since with that kind of poison, nothing worthwhile will grow there for quite some time! And his children are not inclined to come back to this closeknit rural community.


This is the reality of much of rural Japan !



we met him before:

his last apple tree


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