Season changes in Japan tend to arrive like clockwork, and few changes are as well predicted (and highly anticipated) as the blooming of the cherry blossoms ("sakura"). A cherry-blossom tree in full bloom is truly more than the sum of its parts, presenting an almost unearthly, indescribable beauty that no photograph can capture (although that doesn't stop hordes of both amateur and professional photographers from trying, myself included.)

Thus, it was with doubtless disappointment that the throngs of tourists that descend upon Kyoto this past weekend (many, certainly, from all over Japan, with tours scheduled long in advance) were treated [...]

While waiting the other day at an intersection I traverse often (under a huge maze of overpasses), it suddenly struck me that the name of the intersection might look funny to an English- (but not Japanese-) speaker: Ouchi. It's pronounced "oh-ooh-chi", and sounds like the fictitious Irish name O'Coochie without the 'k' sound.

It's just a name, but for what it's worth, the component characters mean "big" and "inner".

Unlike America where a driver's license is easier to get than a dog license, Japan makes you go through a lot of very time consuming, expensive pain (roughly five thousand dollars worth) before you can get a license.

Wonderfully, though, it used to be that if you had an international driver's permit, you could pretty much drive indefinitely on that (with minimal cost each year to renew it in your home country). And, if you had the foreign license and met a few simple criteria, you could just pay a few bucks and get a Japanese license issued from it. [...]

With both my brother Mike and good friend Rick each expecting their first child in May, I made a quick list of things a new parent should have on hand. Many are obvious, but in any case, here's the first pass at a list, in no particular order: