It's been a busy week. As I mentioned in my previous post, we took a weekend trip to Aomori in the far north of Japan's main island, and on the way home I came down with a cold. I'm finally feeling better today.

While driving around the mountainous coast of the far northwest corner of Japan's main island, I came across a tree full of beautiful Japanese camellia (otometsubaki · 乙女椿). They're not difficult to find, but pristine examples within easy reach and not molested by wind are a bit more difficult. I've gotten decent photos on only one other [...]

We're on a short family trip to Hirosaki (弘前) at the northern end of the main Japanese island of Honshu. It's cold enough up here that their cherry blossoms are three or four weeks later than in Kyoto, and are now at their peak. There's also snow still on the ground in some shaded areas, despite being well into the 70s (~25C).

Our hotel is the Best Western Hotel Newcity Hirosaki, and I don't recommend it if moronic policies bother you. It's hot and muggy, but the room "air conditioner" works only as a heater until May 1st, after which [...]
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入学式から帰って来た疲れた息子をヘルパーに使わせていただきました。

Setting up a bunch of flash units in the living room to take pictures of Fumie in her costume for her recent part in her ballet school's production of The Nutcracker, I asked Anthony to step in so that I could take a test shot to gauge the initial flash settings I'd guessed at. He'd just come home from a short day at school and wanted to relax with his ice-cream snack, so he wasn't really in the mood to be a prop.

I was happy that I'd at least landed in the ballpark for the settings (they were [...]

After day 1 of our weekend trip to Shirahama Japan we debated on what to do for the second day before making the three-hour drive home to Kyoto that evening. The area is known for having pandas, but I'm not a big fan of zoos so I didn't really want to go. (I've lived a 5-minute walk from the Kyoto City Zoo for 10 years, and have been only twice.) But Anthony wanted to see the pandas, so off to "Adventure World" we went.

Upon walking in it was clear it wasn't a normal zoo, with the entrance hall being [...]

この間、週末の旅行でパンダが多い白浜(和歌山県)に行きました。

As I mentioned the other day, we took a short weekend trip to Shirahama (白浜), in Wakayama Prefecture a three-hour drive south from Kyoto. We left on Friday after Anthony got home from school, so arrived late in the evening, giving us all of Saturday and most of Sunday to enjoy the area.

We had a nice hybrid Western/Japanese room at Hotel Laforet....

The area is known for its small white-sand beach, and for having pandas (in what I assumed was a zoo, but as we'll see in a later post, the pandas are at an amusement/nature park). It [...]