day 3 japan

woke early to warm temperature, but a greyer sky.
halloween - but not here - no observance.
first stop - the ocean - back floating - under a grey morning sky - no waves to contend with just effortless floating and letting the rhythm of the ocean carry me.
while the tears streamed down my temples.

tears of true joy.
floating - floating - breathing.

no one in the water but me.

wow.

breakfast served in a large wood bungalow adjacent to our building - facing the ocean - low benches - very large low table - cushions and lots of fresh air and light.

EXCELLENT coffee with cream - potato soup - yes soup for breakfast - 2 small fresh dinner roll type buns - butter - marmalade - sliced pealed dragon fruit and mandarin orange.

lovely young god woman with more of a tibetan face inn keeper serving us with light beaming out of her otherworldly face - the bungalow double wide doors wide open to the morning rain and breeze.

then off to an amazing dye facility where we spent all day dyeing all the pieces for the 2nd floor marketplace for the show - including a dress that i had made out of mom's cotton kitchen clothes.
a very specialized process - dorozome or 'mud dye' - achieved through many very specific stages.
a hand made steel cage - the size of a cement mixer - full of local hard wood chips that are burnt down to ash and cooked into a mulch - this mixes with an iron & steel rich volcanic soil that creates a very fine mud in a pond outside the dye studio.

hard to explain - but a series of metal vats and huge ladles and gentle dipping massaging & squeezing - soak after soak - yields a wide range of browns to greys and blue also if the aisome or indigo dye is added.

it was pouring rain at the dye studio and we were working away with windows and doors wide open.

more of the same tomorrow and then we are off to Kagoshima to see Shin's hometown, the volcanoe and an arts festival - spend one night there - all before flying back to Tokyo to get the show up in 2.5 days !

tonight i swam alone in the rain.
aaaaahmazing.
shallow for a very long way out - white sandy bottom - and plenty of salt in the water to make back-floating totally effortless.
i have not spent this much time in the ocean since i was 28 living in the British Virgin Islands !

then drove for miles in the dark and pouring rain for a VERY local - very traditional Amami supper of EVERY fish imaginable.

home now writing this snapshot of our day.

oh & before i hit the sack we toured a little at lunch time and saw thousands of the prehistoric trees called cycad trees.
a brutal - stout - graphic palm like tree.
all you can think of is dinosaurs when you see them.
they are gorgeous !


love what i am being exposed to - such a HUGE privilege,
love to all my family back home, chi