beautiful autumn

i thought i'd never see it anywhere else, the autumn beauty. nothing could possibly compare with Japan. with its passion for admiring the changes. but maybe something can. last autumn was pretty wet and depressing for a variety of reasons, but this one is magnificent. October has so far been sunny (bar 2-3 days last week), and very mild (currently 20C!). the sky is a blue i'd never seen here in autumn before - or maybe it's just that in all my years of living here, i was actually at school, and thus unable to see it all, as i left before and came home after daylight. but coming home these days is amazing. i have to drive up a small hill, with view on the closest mountain. and everywhere, trees that i'd hitherto only thought of as brown, in this season, turn out to vary in colour a lot. you just have to see it in the sunshine. so i kind of feel like i'm in Japan, and that's just heavenly.