The "East-i" is JR East's shinkansen track inspection train. It runs at night, when regular passenger services do not run. There's no commercially made model of it, so a member of the Iwate Model Railroad Club ("Iwatetsu") made this one himself.

It's been a while since we've posted a sunset photo. The sunsets haven't gotten any less incredible.

Our neighbor across the street gave us a daikon (Japanese radish) from her garden tonight.



Guess I need to get pickling equipment sooner rather than later.

Along with everything else (we even saw azaleas in bloom today), the morning glories are blooming.

Of course there are plenty of bugs to go along with all the autumn flowers, and it's hard to photograph flowers without getting a few insects as well.

It's fall, and all of Kitakami seems to be in bloom! We don't know if it's from all the rain last month, or the warm weather that continued later than usual, or the combination of the two, but bright colors are everywhere.

Farmers have started harvesting their rice. It gets cut and bundled, then the bundles are hung on poles. Most, like these, use vertical poles with the rice stacked in columns. Others use horizontal poles, with the rice bundles hanging over them rather like a clothesline.

Incidentally, the guy in the blue jacket is not a rice farmer. In fact, he's not even a guy — he's a scarecrow! The rice farmer's the one in the white shirt.

Tired of the izakaya scene in Kitakami? Maybe it's time to come to American World! Its combination of shopping, restaurants, and amusements seems to be very attractive to young people in Kitakami. I can't say it's all that American — the bookstore has hardly any books in English — but it does offer fast-food burgers, Baskin Robbins ice cream, and a Ferris wheel (invented by an American engineer in 1893).

(It's also home to the only hobby shop in Kitakami, but alas, they have no trains.)

The last golden rays of the sun, heralding the coming of nightfall, light the last golden ears of rice, heralding the coming of autumn.

Some of the successful spiders here — outdoor ones, that is — have grown quite large. And the largest ones are the ones that have built webs on street lights, which attract bugs by the swarm.

Last week, while walking the dogs at night, we saw something quite large hanging from a web on a streetlight. It looked for all the world like a moth, but it was way too big to be one. Even if there was a moth that big, there's no way a spider's web would trap it. It had to be a bit of insulation or something.

A few nights later, it was gone. But something was fluttering in the light. We could see it easily from 100 yards away. Was it a bat? A small bird? No, the movement wasn't right. It was very fluttery and quick. As we got closer, we could see its wings going very, very fast. It was moving too much to tell for sure, but it really seemed like a moth the size of a baseball.

Later, we discovered one that had landed, so we could get a good look and photos.



Here's another look, along with Stefanie's hand to give a sense of the scale.



I hope these things never start eating my suits!