Tuesday, July 18

 

Early morning. On the way to Naamumon village, we stopped at a market. Ryu found a cowbell at the market and immediately bought one. As we walked out of the temple in the village, Ryu's cowbell clanged. We walked on with the rice paddies on our left and the Man River on our right. Waterwheels appeared time to time dropping water from Man river into the rice paddy. When Ryu’s cowbell rang several times, Beer asked Ryu a question. “When I was working in Bangkok and missed home, I used to listen to the music using cowbells. What do you think of when you missed home?” Ryu answered “Mt. Fuji, I guess.” While we enjoyed our conversation butterflies appeared one to another. White, cream, brown, black…among butterflies with various kind of colors, there was one butterfly with blue dots was resting on a leaf as if she was waiting for us. We got excited and rose our voices, “wow!” “amazing!” “a blue butterfly!” The butterfly herself was unperturbed by this and simply remained still with her wings spread. 

We meet Uncle Gen at the of the bridge. He was hurrying to prepare for the planting red sticky rice. On the way back, I spotted someone working in the rice fields in distance. It took my breath away. It was because the rice spreading the fields, the green of the trees sprouting in the mountains, and the blue of the sky spread out on an overwhelming scale as if embracing the person moving slightly in the distance. We each sang our favorite songs as we bid farewell to the rural landscape glistening in the sun.

   Late in the evening, we found a group of high school students playing basketball. I heard that they play basketball here every day. One of them said "I'm not good at playing sports that use the foot" and another said "I exercise for health", but the words one said, "I simply love basketball," told everything. The evening sky and the mountains of Dansai seemed to be overlooking them. The high school students chasing the ball around the court were absolute youth.

    Sky, mountains, people. When the high school students are sweating on their foreheads on the basketball court, the waterwheel that drops water on Gen's rice fields is surely turning. I imagined that. The sound of creaking wood leaking from the spinning waterwheel. The sound of dribbling on the court. As I am much smaller than the sky and the mountains, I cannot hear both at the same time. I feel a little sad about that, but perhaps the reason the blue butterfly I saw today did not move with its wings spread was because it was listening intently to both sounds. With this thought in mind, I headed home.