Nature, in all it’s glory
By Oli
At 3:55 PM · Thursday, 11 September · 2003
To Diary · Japan · Life
Nature is really putting on a show. Two nights ago Mars and the Moon were right beside each other. It was actually quite unreal, as I’ve never been able to see stars beside a full moon before. Also it was ascending faster than the moon, which pretty much ruled out most stars. Miwa and I wondered if it was a satellite (or maybe the International Space Station) or not. Mars has been exceptionally bright recently, a great combination of astronomic coincidences.
Yesterday morning we were awoken at 5:30am by an intense thunderstorm. It was just on sunrise, and at the start of the storm we could still see the sun yellowing the horizon. As the rain started and the cloud advanced, the sunrise became obscured, but continued to affect what we saw — the light went yellowish-brown, almost sepia. Very unusual, combined with massive lightning very close by (down to 2 seconds between lightning and thunder).
This morning was hot so we headed to the beach. Outside the front door we found a spider in the process of wrapping a centipede・ムカデ in it’s web. The centipede was fighting but completely suspended. Amazing. Although the sea had appeared calm, when we got down to the beach the swell was actually very strong — probably because of a typhoon near Okinawa・沖縄県. I tried to swim anyway, and the first thing I saw was a pod of box jellyfish・クラゲ, at least 7. Yikes. By the time we got back to the apartment, the centipede had given up the fight.
Damn, nature is cool. As Louis Armstrong said And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
