Flowers are in bloom right now, and I've been having fun finding out about the kinds of flowers that grow in my neighbourhood.
Something occurred to me while I was listening to Portishead's Dummy. They have a song called "Sour Times" and another one called "It Could Be Sweet". All we need is a song with "bitter" in the title and another one with "spicy" in the title and it would complete the set.
It might be fun to have a prompt challenge where tastes serve as prompts: sweet, sour, bitter, spicy, salty, nutty, floral, coppery, etc. I have zero inclination to host a challenge or a fest, so it's just a thought. Maybe I'll write some stuff on my own using these prompts.
Watched Kitaro Tanjo: Gegege no Nazo (The Birth of Kitaro) the anime film a while ago. While Gegege no Kitaro is geared towards children (by Japanese standard), this film is quite dark and definitely not for kids. It's very much a small-town horror film with plenty of gore and lots of content warning.
It's an interesting albeit fantastical take on how Japan managed to survive and thrive in the aftermath of War World II. The film also injects quite a bit of mangaka Mizuki Shigeru's anti-war sentiment. I think that part might have been lifted from Mizuki Shigeru's autobiographical manga Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths; one of the main characters in Kitaro Tanjo is even named Mizuki. That part struck a chord in particular especially because Mizuki Shigeru himself had lived through it.