At the convenince store today, I noticed this way to get liquored up with a candy bar. The lower-corner says that it contains 1% alcohol, and that those driving a car should be careful. (No comments are directed toward those operating heavy machinery, though.)

In the interest of being thorough for this post, I purchased the little package for 150 yen and tried them. (I'll stop at nothing to be complete and accurate for my readers, you know.) They tasted like slighly crunchy, slighly orange-ish cherry cordials, but with only the most mild taste of brandy/alcohol.

Hopefully, the can of [...]

Visiting the Kyoto Botanical Gardens in January with Anthony and Shimada-san, we noticed this somewhat funny sign over the entrance gate. The Japanese on it says "Entrance." The English translation of that Japanese is as standard as can be, so one wonders what events transpired to make them choose the English shown.

The botanical gardens was where Anthony had his first preschool field trip (almost a year ago now), and are where I photographed the funky flowers I posted a few months ago.

On the trip in January, we saw something (we presumed a plant of some sort) wrapped [...]

In a post earlier this week about one of our mini outings to enjoy the cherry blossoms, I mentioned that Anthony had brought along a BBQ set that he'd received from my sister Marci and her husband, grillmaster extraordinaire, Marty Kreta.

I thought I'd blogged about when he got it, but it turns out I hadn't, so I'll remedy that now, because it shows such quintessential Anthonyness (and quintessential me: I thought the camera was set to autofocus, but it wasn't, so the pictures ar all out of focus until I noticed).

He ended up laying out the [...]

We visited Fumie's mom to have some cake for my birthday. Anthony gave me a card that he picked out himself. Mommy wrote "happy birthday" on it for him, and then he drew a picture on it. It was very sweet.

Anthony was still dressed up from the entrance ceremony held that morning at his preschool (wearing the same spiffy vest that he wore to it last year).

Considering that he was dressed nicely, I'm glad that he ate more neatly than the last time he had chocolate cake.

After the cake, Anthony sat with Mommy and checked out [...]

My blog has been filled with nothing but cherry blossoms for the past week or so, because for the last week or so most cherry trees around here have been hitting their blossom peak. The timing of blooming, though, is certainly not coordinated among Japan's cherry trees.

According to Julia's Kitakami Photoblog, the blossoms aren't even close to making their appearance there. Kitakami is a town about 415 miles north-east of Kyoto, and can be quite a bit colder than here.

Even locally, the cherry-blossom season varies considerably. The other day we drove a bit north into the mountains, and [...]