sunshine now. rain expected

so far it has been a nice blue sky thursday morning. rain is expected in the afternoon. i may be meeting Noriko after her work at Senri-chuo for some music and dinner. or if it is raining i may go to a new "live house" near Umeda Station in Osaka.

back to yesterday`s walk to Minoo Taki. "sunshine, sanshouo and saru". sanshouo is Japanese for salamander and saru is monkey. you never know what you might see on a walk with me. the mountains and forest trails are still mainly green　but i did take some nice colorful photos of a few colorful trees. there were many people walking to the waterfall with picnic stuff, dogs in sweaters.　i met a college student named Rei walking on the hilly side of the trail. and we met two cute dogs taking a break on the trail. it was after leaving the waterfall that we saw all the people looking down from a small bridge over a fast moving stream. there was a camera man and sound man filming something. sanshouo da! it is a salamander. i think i saw 4 of them. they are a little strange looking. Noriko`s
Mother`s reaction when seeing the little video i took was "kimochi warui" which means basically "a bad feeling". i walked back to the waterfall following a guy carrying a guitar just in case he was going to give a little "taki live"" (concert at the waterfall). he wasn`t but it was then that i saw the monkey posing for everyone up on a rock near the waterfall. after walking back along the takimichi (waterfall trail), i saw more monkeys in the trees. and stopped by the salamander bridge again. you never know when you have seen your last salamander so i wanted to see them again. back at the trailhead which is in front of the train station for Minoo, i took the bus to the nice shopping mall for dinner. Noriko was at her Kobukuro concert and i did not want her Mother to have to cook or wait on me after my walk. of course, she was waiting for me and had some snacks and tea for me as we all watched tv and looked at my photos and videos from the day`s walk.