I'm back in Kyoto after several weeks visiting family in The States. The size of my waiting inbox is impressively depressing.

Though the flight back had pluses and minuses, it was much nicer than the flight the previous week. Here are some of the pluses and minuses of the day, on our Cleveland→Minneapolis→Seattle→Osaka-Kansai trip on Delta Airlines...

Minus: Had to leave the hotel before its restaurant opened; missed free breakfast. Plus: Lady let us grab a couple of muffins anyway.

Minus: 6:00am line at Cleveland airport security was unexpectedly long. Plus: Airport staff said neighboring security area was [...]
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After having heard of (but not paid much attention to) the game "Minecraft", I got it for 10-year-old Anthony and me to play together, and found it to be delightful fun. The gameplay is completely unstructured (you explore, mine for resources, and build stuff), though how things work is a bit opaque at first until you figure out how to build stuff. Anthony did so quickly, so he kindly explained it to me.

However, I ran into trouble setting up the WiFi link to play together, and felt like an idiot once I realized what the problem was. I thought [...]
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The time we spent with family in Washington last week was filled with lots of sports, mostly baseball (both playing and watching), but Anthony's love of soccer was not overlooked. One day before the bulk of the family flew in, we visited the playground at his cousin Josh's elementary school to kick a ball around a bit...

Anthony's cousin Josh is really talented in baseball -- he's seven years old, but holds his own playing against twelve-year olds -- but he has little experience with soccer, so the play today was a bit lopsided.

The soccer was fun, but once [...]

As part of my summer travels, I moved from my sister's place in Washington State to my folks' place in Ohio this week. As the last time I traveled to The States, the flight schedule involved some unpleasant experiences, but unlike last time where the memorable highlight was an anonymous hero, this time the memorable highlight is a check-in agent with a black heart.

(This is one of those "too long for anyone to read" story that I'm writing mostly for my own memory, and as a bit of a cathartic measure, because it was a quite frustrating experience, to [...]
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I don't know anything about wine other than "I like" and "I don't like", and I found out today that I really like this 14 Hands Cabernet Sauvignon. My sister-in-law normally has an educated idea about what wines she buys, but today was in a rush and just grabbed this Washington State wine on display at the front of the store.

Apparently it's a fairly cheap (low price) commodity wine available all over America.

My sister-in-law thought it was just okay, but I really liked it.