During the years I lived in Japan and right up until my departure in 2007, there was much commentary in the Japanese press about tourism. More specifically, the lack of foreign tourists who came to Japan relative to other popular destinations around the world. Japanese themselves travel extensively inside Japan, particularly during festival seasons. There were certainly foreign tourists in Kyoto and Osaka whenever I dropped in, though not in vast numbers. My own town of Sanda was definitely not on the travel circuit. But there was a foreign tourist problem.

However things have changed and recently I have read about Japanese concerns about the 'hordes' of of foreign tourists who have descended upon Japan since the end of covid. They are starting to experience the same problems that 'over-tourism' is presenting elsewhere, particularly in Tokyo and historic centres like Kyoto and Nara. Some shops are even displaying 'Japanese only' signage in their windows, likely from fear of language issues than xenophobia. Though there is that too.

When I moved up here 30 years ago, I bought a copy of Jim Smith's seminal 'How to see the Blue Mountains', the guide at that time to bushwalking in this neck of the woods. Over a number of years I did most of the walks that Jim had painstakingly recorded (together with his hand-drawn, pull-out maps), sometimes with friends or even a girlfriend now and then. I still have it, though the other day I bought Veechi Stuart's more recent 'Blue Mountains Best Walks.'

Ann wanted to do a particular walk at North Katoomba, the relatively mild and quite short Minnihaha Falls track. Veechi had faithfully mapped and recorded details of the walk, so we set off for about an hours stroll (with some steps and an incline as you descend to the falls). There were a lot of walkers, particularly families, so we had company pretty much the whole way. The falls themselves were splendid, roaring down into a rock pool from about 30 metres, full of recent rainfall. It was such a lovely autumn day that I took this picture. I hope that this is the first of many for us, now that Ann is semi-retired.

I was thinking about a Thomas Hardy poem, a fragment of the poem, yesterday, and decided to try to find it in one or two of my collections of his work. I had recalled buying a copy of one anthology, The Chosen Poems of Thomas Hardy, fairly recently, and set out to find the volume, which I thought was in my bedside table.

How could I be so sure? Because I had originally bought the book having read somewhere in another place that Philip Larkin had kept this very compilation by his bedside for many years, a recommendation if ever there was one. His version was likely the little blue original first published around 1930. These being quite expensive now (about $60 due to their antiquarian nature), I opted for a plain jane paperback from the 1970's, hoping that the contents were in fact the same.

Do you think I can find it? Despite extensive searches in all the usual and expected places I cannot locate this book. It seems to have disappeared, not unlike my wedding band, though that's another story altogether.

Now I am wondering whether I actually bought it, or if I dreamed it all up? Is it possible it was all in the imagination? The transaction seemed so real, the receiving of it, the unpackaging, but there is no record of purchase nor notification by email.

Where is a person from Porlock when you need one?

A week or two ago I was working in the garden, pulling out weeds and long grass for the fortnightly green recycling collection. I enjoy doing it and it gives me a lot of satisfaction to close the lid on a bin brimming with a few hours labour.

But on this occasion, having removed my gloves and come inside to wash my hands, I realised that somehow my wedding band was not on my finger anymore. It is something you detect straight away, the sensation of nakedness, the absence of the gentle pressing of the band. I rushed outside to look in my gloves - the most obvious place - but alas, no.

Then began a three days combing of every inch of the garden I had been in, the emptying of bins, the sifting of materials. Nothing. Vanished off the the face of the earth.

For the time-being I have given in - the ring may reveal itself in the fullness of time - but for now I have pressed into service a gold band with Celtic patterns that I bought from a shop in Scotland way back in 2004. It has been sitting in my sock draw for at least a decade and being a perfectly acceptable wedding band, it is now on the appropriate digit. Sad about the other, of course, but a happy marriage is better than a ring any day of the week.

 According to most people I meet, the world is in a parlous state. It is worse, they usually add, than it has ever been. I can see how this pessimistic outlook has been arrived at, and it is difficulty not to want to jump in an join them in a community of woe.

So why would so many would arrive at this opinion. Well, there are two fairly major and highly destructive wars in progress, earthquakes in odd places, bridges brought down, extreme weather, inflation and the cost of living, bleached coral and much more promised. Media of all stripes who operate in a total time environment (24/7) pump out images and messages of doom and disaster on a daily basis with grim prophecies of what is to come. There are loads of pundits doing the same.

Notwithstanding my faith, I tend towards a pessimistic world-view myself. Were I of the absurd nature of a Pangloss, I might be able to put an optimistic spin on whatever disasters befall us. But I'm not sure that I would convince anyone. least of all myself.

The Christian faith is an eschatological one ultimately, in which 'end times' are predicted and expected to occur. Many Christians see the current malaise and chaos as being symptomatic of just such an 'end time' and it is not hard to see why. While Armageddon has been a lively topic for many centuries, with the faithful believing that 'now' was the time, there is little doubt that we live in a uniquely dangerous period (nuclear war, A1, climate change etc) and so have reason to think that there is not long to wait.

It is always best to cautious of course and not be presumptuous. Everyone who has predicted the end before has been 100% wrong. And only one Person knows the actual timing, anyway.

Daily light saving ended last night. It would be more accurate to say that it ended this morning at 3am, but few people are awake at that time to celebrate the moment. 

The way out of the change is easier than the way in, for at the end, you get an extra hour of sleep. You might think that this is always a good thing, but sometimes that long night can seem to pass very slowly indeed. I usually wake several times at night, so there was a sense that I was in bed for much, much longer than I actually was.

I usually change all the analogue clocks before retiring to avoid being deceived in the morning, though I note that all the new-fangled do it all by themselves. When, I wonder, will shoes tie their own laces?

We had an extraordinary tempest the other night. It was the kind that you read about in novels, where the whole house is shaking under the tyranny of crazed unpredictable wind gusts and pelting rain. The elements always seem on the verge of breaking in and consuming all that is before them. Somehow the leaky lounge-room roof did not leak (a quirk of wind direction, I think) but the garden was inundated and the driveway partly washed away, as usual. Even today there are pools of water amongst the trees and everywhere is wet. The wellies are working overtime.

Added to the excitement of the elements was my getting the coronavirus for the second time. Like last year's visitation, it is not severe in terms of the symptoms. But it means isolating for a period of time, so I had to give up my shift on the Newcastle Herald yesterday, missed church today and will not be able to attend choir tomorrow. I'm sure that there is a lesson in this for me somewhere.

Ann and JJ have gone to Brisbane for a few days, Tom is at his mums, so I am truly isolated. I don't mind being alone though I do enjoy company, for are we not social beings? Perhaps tomorrow I'll record another episode of Writers.

The first anniversary of my program, Writers from the Vault (a literary hurdy-gurdy) is coming up. I am a few months ahead with recordings so it not due for broadcast until July. But there is it - 26 episodes that I would not have dared to even contemplate before I began the show. I allowed myself to get ahead because I was very nervous about the project, which was original from top to bottom, and my capacity to keep it up. Unlike other 2RPH programs, it is not time specific, so I have a lot of leeway in that regard.

Where do I find the material for a broadly-based look at the old literary canon? Well, there are some wonderful archives online (Internet Archive, Trove etc), there are public libraries, there is my own library of books and there are also things that I come across in my daily perusal of newspapers and so forth. I go down an awful lot of rabbit holes and often come up with stuff that I had not been searching for but liked anyway.

And what might a typical program look like? There will always be a couple of poems, a little bio on the authors, an extract from a  novels or short story, a feature article from an old magazine, a letter from a  famous writer, a short review of a book, a monologue from a play, a piece of writing about literature or a writer. Not always of course, since I am constrained by the 30 minutes allotted, but usually all of these are represented.

If you are at all interested in listening to an episode, go to the 2RPH website and find the program guide. We work on a two week cycle.