(no subject)

179 miles.
In Tamayama-mura, just barely inside Morioka city limits--but I will post about Morioka a little later. Tamayama-mura is the birthplace of poet Ishikawa Takuboku.

Here are some scraps of attempted translations. Everything I've heard about the grammar of classical Japanese has gone in one ear and out the other, so they're wrong.

On the white beach of an isle in the eastern sea,
Soaked with tears,
I gambol with a crab.

Aiming for the wide ocean,
I left my house to weep
For seven days, or eight.

I left with a rusted pistol
To dig up sand in the dunes.

This dune of sand,
Built up in a night by a storm--
Whose grave is it?

Crawling on the sand of the dunes,
Suddenly I remember
The pain of first love.