My walk down by the Kagoshima harbor failed to accomplish its original goal, but I didn't mind. The air was full of dragonflies, hundreds and hundreds of them, dancing all over the boats and walls. The sea ripe with the August jellyfish bloom--fat little masses of tentacle twitching in the water. And always the volcano in the background, occasionally spitting out a puff of smoke and ash, to remind you that it still has fangs.

I always have loved graffiti, graffiti in Japan doubly so. In a society which stresses conformity and heralds the hammering down of nails with the audacity to stand, the graffiti is a reminder that dogma and reality are, mercifully, rarely coincident.