夏がやっと来たら・・・地震 Summer Finally Came, with an Earthquake

August 11, 2009: 季節 Seasons

青空と亀清のでかすぎる看板 Blue Sky with our Monsterous Sign

夏らしい晴れている日の今日。青空は久しぶりと感じます。今年の夏は終わらない梅雨のせいか、雨が多かったです。でも、今日の青空は目が痛いほど明るい。

今朝は午前5時過ぎで地震で起こされました。発生地が遠かったのに、ここまで感じたと言うのはすごいですね。
UKからのお客さんがいました。「生まれてから始めて地震を感じた」と騒いでいました。「喜ぶところじゃないよ!」と注意しておきました。

さて、この写真は久しぶりの青空と亀清のでかすぎる看板と言うことで、この看板に注目していただきたいです。どう思いますか?隣の松の木に邪魔じゃない?看板の高さで目が無理やりに上に引っ張れちゃう。けど、目は上の電線に行って欲しくない。亀清の木造、伝統的な造りの外観に行って欲しいです。なおかつ、鉄筋じゃなくて、もっと人間に優しい木の看板の方がいいと思います。
と言う事で、近々に目の高さで新しい木の看板を作る計画しています。このでか過ぎてかたくて冷たい鉄筋の看板を卒業さして。この写真は「Before」として考えてください。「After」をお楽しみに。

This summer has been an endless one. Not a Beach Boys type of Endless -- an endlessly rainy one. Today the clouds finally broke and we had one of those blue skies that hurts your eyes in its brilliancy.

It wasn't all fun and joy, though. We were woken up this morning a little after 5am by an earthquake. Even though the epicenter was several hundred kilometers away, we still felt it here enough to be woken up. Some guests from the UK that had been staying here were excited -- "This is the first time in our lives to feel a quake!" I had to remind them that earthquakes aren't something to rejoice about -- a lot of damage and injury was done.

Anyways, the attached picture shows today's blue sky along with our inn's over-sized sign. I actually wanted to write about this sign. What do you think about it? Doesn't it seem to be competing with the noble pine tree next to it? And doesn't it seem to draw your eyes upward, where the ugly electrical wires make a visual mess? I would rather have peoples eyes stay down and look at our inn's traditional wooden facade. And I definitely don't like the cold, harsh steel it's made of.
I am planning on making a pedestrian-friendly eye-level wooden sign, and getting rid of this steel monstrosity. So consider this the "Before" picture, and look forward to seeing the "After" one.





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