Starting preschool is a big deal in Japan. It's a "big kid" step, and as such can be a mix of excitement and stress for the kid, Anthony included. It puts parents in a difficult situation, because while you want to play up the excitement, you do so at the risk of playing up the stress. He gets, for example, the excitement of a new backpack and thermos, but then has then has the stress of having to carry them. Of course, just going can be stressful in and of itself.

One big difference to Anthony between daycare and [...]

I'm pretty good at creating software, but for me it's a very different story when it comes to electronics and mechanics, so it was with great awe that I read one man's attempt to photograph insects in flight.

His saga has 10 pages, starting out with a laser sensor he built to trigger the camera when a bug is in the right spot, and includes taking apart a 1950s mechanical shutter, finding a way to open and close the shutter with electromagnets 20x faster than his modern digital SLR camera's shutter lag, and, well, a lot of smarts. [...]
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Anthony had his first field trip with his preschool class on Thursday, to the Kyoto Prefectural Botanical Gardens. Fumie had come down with a cold, so I got to chaperone. I took 420 photos. Here are three of them...

Monday saw the Aoi Matsuri festival here in Kyoto.

"Aoi Matsuri" is 葵祭 -- Aoi means "hollyhock" (a kind of flower), and matsuri means both "source of great traffic congestion" and "festival".

This particular festival, held on May 15th ever year, dates back about 1,000 years, making it the oldest festival still held today. It's a "festival", though, only in the sense of the hoopla surrounding it is festive -- it's really more of an "event".

People dressed in period costumes leave the imperial palace and walk a path to some shrines a few kilometers away. People line the path [...]

The Japan Times (English-language daily in Japan) has an article today about a plan to photograph and fingerprint foreigners entering Japan. It had been in the works for some time, and has been a topic of some debate, but now it's law.

Here are some excerpts:

Diet passes bill to take foreigners' prints, pics

By Masami Ito

A bill requiring fingerprinting and photographing of foreigners upon entry to Japan was passed Wednesday as a way to prevent terrorism.

An estimated 6 million to 7 million foreigners entering Japan every year will be obliged to have their fingerprints and [...]