As I mentioned yesterday, my 18-month-old MacBook died yesterday. I think the disk controller went bad, taking out the hard drive as well (the big disk that I'd installed myself early on). Apple's products are wonderful when they work, but their laptops have a history of "longevity issues." I guess that's what happens when you push the envelope as far as they do. I wholeheartedly recommend their laptops, but be sure to build into the cost the extra few hundred dollars for the extended warranty, as I did when I bought mine.

Apple is picking it up tomorrow for repair. [...]

Sigh, my MacBook died today, which means that I have to edit stuff with my PC. I like using the PC and its big screen for photo work, but Windows is excruciating for anything else, like writing a blog post. Being forced to use Windows for something like this feels as satisfying as eating a fresh carrot without teeth, so I'll be sticking with simple posts until I get it fixed...

Anthony had a friend, Monet, over to play for a short time yesterday. (Monet was featured last year in this post.) They did "cooking play."

Along with the [...]

Our New-Year's trip to the Amami Islands in southern Japan consisted of two nights on the main Amami-Ooshima island, followed by two nights on the much smaller, much more sparsely-populated next island south, Kakeroma-jima (カケロマ島, the island outlined in blue on the second map of my initial post). The land area covers the size of a large city, but it has a population of only about 1,000.

We stayed at Horizon Club, a "pension" (bed and breakfast) near the eastern ferry port. (Horizon Club – ホライゾンクラブ: web site - blog)

The location consists of a small two-room lodge, and three [...]

As I mentioned yesterday, Kyoto city proper doesn't normally get much snow, but today we had occasion to be in the mountains a bit and Anthony got a few moments to play in some snow that hadn't melted yet.

That's not what these pictures are from. 🙂

I thought to use the occasion to post some pictures from last Spring – April 30th – when we found more than a bit of snow on top of a mountain in Kitafurano (Hokkaido, in northern Japan), where the snow doesn't melt away until July.

The "bad example" referenced in the caption above [...]

Today we had a few flakes of snow, which is all the main part of Kyoto normally gets. The outlying areas, especially up in the mountains, can get heavy amounts – one of Anthony's school friends couldn't make it to school today because of the snow in the mountains. A couple of years ago, we did get several inches of accumulation, which made the Heian Shrine quite pretty.

One sure sign of winter in Japan are the snuggies that you see appear on trees in the late fall. These komomaki straw mats – wrapped around the trunks of pines and [...]