Our hostel is high up in a tall modern building. The walls in the reception area are interrupted by large ceiling-to-floor windows which look onto the city landscape.
The sun is setting:
The last daylight of August was dying in crayon colours beneath the clouds on the suburban horizon.
Jonathan Franzen
Asphalt. It is hot and humid. We are on the way back to our hostel. It is a quiet neighbourhood with almost no cars in the streets.
We cross at a zebra crossing. No cars. I put my camera down on the asphalt for a different perspective. While I am checking the photo on the camera’s LCD display, I realise that we must also be mid-way through our journey in Japan.
A large city. A modern city. High-rising buildings. This is just a one-night stopover, and I do not pay too much attention to the urban details.
I am already thinking about our next destination, Kyoto.
After a few days in Suhara we head back to Osaka to reach Kyoto.
I am trying to remember if the photo below is from the railway station of Yuasa or a station we stopped to transfer on the train to Osaka.
It does not matter. I remember it was mid-morning of a mid-week day. Only a few passengers on the platform were waiting for the local train.
I walked to the end of the platform and saw the intricate lines made by the tracks and the electric cables above them. I have always liked to take photos at railway stations.
I see them as the beginning of a journey rather than a destination.
An old basketball hoop is at the end of one of the alleys. The paint is peeling off due to the sunlight, the heat, and the salty air from the sea.
A hoop in a small alley in Suhara. Someone is living nearby and likes to shoot now and then. Nice.
The day we go to Suhara’s small harbour, it is empty. It is still too early for the fishermen. We see their nets drying out in the sun. The nets hang from wooden frames and look tired.
I may be wrong. This harbour looks a bit abandoned as if this harbour would have seen better days. The small boats that leave here daily may struggle with the costs they have to go out and fish.
In the afternoon, before dinner time, we walk to the harbour. We observe people who are out for walks and waiting for the evening. They will then go back to their homes. Some live alone. Some live with their families.
In the meantime, they are looking at the small harbour where some fishermen prepare their boats for the night and at the sun slowly setting into the sea.
It is late afternoon. We see a family leaving a house. They have dressed up. Where are they going? It could be a family reunion. Maybe a dinner.
Three generations living under the same roof?
The ground floor windows of the houses in this part of the village are protected by bamboo curtains which protect from the summer heat as well as from strangers looking in.
