Every once in a while we see a great blue heron around this building (across from where these night blossom shots were taken), usually standing motionless on the sloping banister wall. The first time we saw him we didn't even realize it was real, until eventually it moved slightly.

I happened to have my camera with me when I saw him on the banister wall today, and was about to take his picture when he jumped down to the stairs leading to the basement property. I ran up to look, and saw him go down and inside, and then saw [...]

A few more pictures of May snow near Furano, Hokkaido, Japan, where there was still plenty of snow a kilometer up......

On the way home, I was surprised to notice our hotel so visible in the distance (the white building in the lower mountain, above the rightmost orange backhoe), and even more so when the car navigation system said that it was more than 10 miles away. It looks much closer, but is 10.6 miles (17km) away.

Today Nils posted a recording of the frogs in the rice paddy behind his place. It's sure to bring back memories of Japan for anyone who used to live near a rice paddy (although they'll be bad memories for those whose bedroom window faced said paddy).

The family down the hall has had a nice flower display on their porch for the last week or so, but now that it's gone, I thought I'd recreate some of it here....

Outside the gates of the forsaken and forlorn dorm of my previous post, I noticed this stand of housing magazines, and couldn't help but appreciate the wit of its title, nor its inescapable appropriateness for the location. The magazine's name in Japanese is オウチ, which is a polite way to say "home." It's a three-syllable word (oh, eww, chi), but when romanize (written with roman letters, like English) it becomes Ouchi, which looks just like "Ouch!" except for the location of the dot at the end (! vs. i). Very witty.

Considering the common penniless student looking for a place [...]