It's a lackluster cherry-blossom season this year in that for whatever reason, the trees are not blossoming all at once but each at their own pace. Looking out the living-room window, for example, I see one tree that has been in full bloom for almost a week and the one right next to it just barely starting.

Yet, similar to the popular bumper-sticker adage "a bad day at golf is better than a good day at work", it's still a pretty darn lovely week. This morning I needed something from the convenience store, and when I stepped out [...]

Since the cherry blossoms are pretty much failing us so far this year in Kyoto, I thought I'd pull out a nice picture from last autumn that I've not featured yet:

I took this picture on the same trip that yielded many wonderful pictures from my friend Shimada-san, featured in this post from last fall. Some other nice pictures I took from the same time are on one of my pretty pictures pages.