goshikinuma

The name means five-colored lake, and they ain't lying. I went there today and come back with a whole new appreciation for the colors of small water bodies. Goshikinuma includes a delightful walking trail that passes some spectacular lakes and runs through a beautiful forest that is filled with the steady din of a battalion of hidden cicadas. When i first entered the trail, the lake i saw was so blue that i firmly believed it was dyed by the tourist bureau. I began to worry about the fish getting poisoned from the vats and vats of dye they must have dumped in, if there were any fish at all at this point. But as i admired the scene and started to understand that nature embraced, not shunned, this bluest of lakes, i reconsidered my previous hypothesis of commercially-driven pollution scandal and welcomed a new idea--that i had simply never seen a lake this clean before. I mean, there could also be some algae or other industrious microorganism pumping out blue stuff, or just making an effort to be bluer than nature had ever intended, but who am i to make scientific theories? I ultimately decided to appreciate this blue lake, and the other lakes of incomprehensible blueness, as simply as the aesthete appreciates a fine painting or a carefully kept garden. I said "konnichiwa" to nearly every passer-by and they usually responded with gusto, and i had a few chats about random things with some old people, as usual. I even met an old English teacher and his English-incompetent wife, and we discussed the algae theory. I wasn't the only one surprised at the blueness of the water! But blue was not the only color i perceived in the lakes; there were certainly more than five. There were black tea browns, coral greens, rainy cloud grays, and everything in between. Time to go have dinner with my new friends and probably get drunk with 100-year-old grandma.