2016/1/29

It wasn’t just yesterday’s brown-eared bulbul.A few days earlier, a local fisherman had told me that a kingfisher had appeared.Then, the next day, what a surprise! A kingfisher appeared right in front of me, holding its prey in its beak.I took excellent photographs.Yesterday, to tell the truth, it wasn’t only the brown-eared bulbul.I was heading to an udon restaurant for lunch, but stopped in front of another restaurant, a soba restaurant that I always passed without going in.When I learned that its opening hours had changed, I went into that soba restaurant.From the seat I was shown to, I could see persimmons in the inner garden.That was when it happened.Suddenly, a bird came flying in.Ah, this must be a Japanese white-eye, I immediately thought.I quickly took my camera out of my bag, moved beside the table of two young women, and photographed it in an instant.It was only after I returned home and transferred the photographs to my computer that I realized: what a surprise! There were fifty!The photographs were magnificent; they could not have been better.As I left the restaurant, I learned that it was a purveyor to the temples Tenryū-ji and Myōshin-ji.It was a restaurant entirely worthy of that distinction.Could it have been Musō Soseki who arranged the opportunity for me to encounter this Japanese white-eye?:-)This article continues.