Craig Arnold's Blog

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Angelica is a member of the Apiaceae, the parsley or celery family, all of which have hollow stems and tiny flowers that present themselves in circular bunches or umbels. From this they get the fine title of umbellifer, umbrella-bearers. In the same family are anise, dill, chervil, celery, caraway, cilantro, cumin, carrot, fennel, parsnip, parsley and Queen Anne’s lace. Many of the umbellifers are delicious, some are contraceptive, and at least one, hemlock, is deadly poison, best known as the c

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In the parking lot of the restaurant, the island’s only restaurant, a crow is perched on the hatchback of a pickup truck. A cat leaps out from under the truck, makes a grab for it, but the crow is too quick, launches itself into the branches with two flaps of its enormous wings. As the crow is almost as big as the cat, with a wicked sharp beak, it is not clear which has been luckier to escape.

Your lunch arrives. You have no idea what you ordered, as you cannot read the menu, and neither of women

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You feel like you are seeing everything now. Nothing was happening, and now everything is happening. Why does your sight seem now so sharp and clear?

      The raspberry vine

            puts out first five white petals

                  then a bright green leaf

At the bottom of your shoulder bag you find the apple, Keiko’s parting gift to you, and as you make short work of it as you walk, enjoying the crunch and the sweet juice of it, pitching the core into the bushes without shame.

      Chewin

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You had not expected this to be so easy. In less than an hour you have found the road that circles the base of the volcano. All that remains is to walk around to the south face where, judging by the map, another road squiggles its way up the crater. You could be to the top and back down to the port long before the boat departs for Tokyo at two-thirty, with time for lunch.

When you round the bend of the road and catch your first glimpse of the summit, you see your mistake. It is as if you have wan

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Miyakejima, or Miyake Island, is one of the Izu-shoto, the chain of islands that begins just beyond of Tokyo Bay and continues south along the juncture of two continental plates. All are to some degree volcanic. Miyake in most cases means “royal estate,” but here it probably remembers an older word, yake, that means “burning.” Like Stromboli, the island is essentially one big volcano, Mount Oyama.

During the last century, the volcano was fairly regular in its habits. Every twenty-odd years, a ven

Among the things that endear you to Japan are drink vending machines. They carry soda and juice and water, to be sure, but also green tea, and – best of all – cans of coffee, with various amounts of milk and sugar, both cold and hot. The most common is Boss Coffee, whose logo features a mustachio’d man with a jut of jaw and a pipe clamped firmly in it. Others carry the face of actor Tommy Lee Jones, who does not look happy to be the boss, looks too sad to be in charge of anything.

These vending m

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On the night boat to Miyakejima, a second-class ticket gets you a bed-sized strip of carpet in a communal cabin, and a blanket to lie on or under as the mood takes you. Even in such a public place, you are pleased to see how the no-shoe rule is observed. In most other parts of the world, you would not leave out a pair of shoes and expect ever to see them again. Except in Switzerland, where the shoes would probably come back cleaned and polished.

You are pleased, also, finally to have an excuse to

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On the night boat to Miyakejima, a second-class ticket gets you a bed-sized strip of carpet in a communal cabin, and a blanket to lie on or under as the mood takes you. Even in such a public place, you are pleased to see how the no-shoe rule is observed. In most other parts of the world, you would not leave out a pair of shoes and expect ever to see them again. Except in Switzerland, where the shoes would probably come back cleaned and polished.

You are pleased, also, finally to have an excuse to

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You have a few hours to kill before taking the overnight boat to the Izu Islands, so you set off to explore Ueno Park.

Ueno is famous for its cherry trees, but the blossoms will not open for another week. People have already begun to claim their spots for hanami, blossom-viewing parties, laying out blue tarps on the sidewalk in much the same way that Americans reserve park pavilions, or lay down blankets in the grass, for Fourth of July barbecues and fireworks. The tarps are the same that the hom

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On the train, contemplating the forest path in Hakushu's poem. The characters oku "inner part, interior" and michi "road," recall Basho, the title of his last travel diary, Oku-no hosomichi. It is usually translated into something like "narrow road of the interior." One could also say "the backwoods."

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, writes Dante. In the middle of our life's journey, I found myself in a dark wood.

Cold and windy, or dark and pathless, what is