It is sweltering hot and humid. The five minute walk from my Kei van to Starbucks left me dripping with sweat. It is a two shower day (as in how many showers I need to take so I do not reek of BO). On even hotter and more humid days it could be a three or even four shower day. But, right now I am sipping on a Japan only Starbucks treat, a Peach in Peach Frappucino, and the heat is becoming a distant memory.

I am sitting in a comfortable lounge chair overlooking Tokyo Bay - through the large glass window there is a bustle of activity. A Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) submarine is being tugged from her berth to begin maneuvers deep beneath the ocean's surface. Sailors in blue fatigues scramble around her deck as officers, they must be officers as they are not doing any of the work, in dress whites oversee the task of putting to sea. A tour boat is leaving her dock, laden with a full load of camera wielding tourists. A cormorant is diving beneath the surface in the hunt for her lunch while the fish are jumping out of the ocean to escape the clutches of her slender beak.

It is another summer day in Japan. I snap a photo and return to my computer screen to write. But I cannot write and so I look up from my backlit screen, at the world before me. Maybe it is the sugary sweet concoction of peach jelly and peach chunks blended together with a little peach syrup into perfection... or maybe it is the sultry voice of an artist I have never heard of on Apple Beats One Radio that makes me pause and get all sentimental. In the short time I have been living in Japan I have fallen in love with this country - with the people, the food, the culture, the mountains, the snow; and of course the kasen, keiryu, genryu, and ogawa.

I have taken a lot of photos, maybe a hundred a week. Sometimes they are okay, most of the time they are crap. Still I am left with a copious amount of unused photos. So in the Starbucks, slurping on that impeccable peach amalgamate, I decided to put those photos, unseen in my Google Photo library, to use. My hope, by creating this collage of photos from my travels throughout Japan, is to show the unique beauty of this country.

So in no particular order, and without rhyme or reason, here is the first installment of the Fallfish Tenkara Photobucket.