This is #8 (and the final post) in a series on our visit to KidZania in Nishinomiya, Japan, where Anthony's day included working at a gas-station, banking, construction, driver's ed, journalism, and pilot training.

Having procured his driver's license earlier, he was still interested in renting a car so he could drive around a bit. Every time he'd tried before, there was a long line, but this time he was able to get in.

However, for reasons I didn't initially understand, he came back to us and said that he wanted to do something else. This was surprising, and it [...]

Today saw a total solar eclipse visible across a thin sliver of earth, starting in India, cutting across China, then clipping a few southern islands of Japan.

Before I talk about the eclipse, allow me to rant about one of the most asinine aspects of Japanese culture, one of those "it's just the way it is" things that distresses and inconveniences everyone, but still never changes...

The tiny World-Heritage jungle island Yakushima, 50 miles off the southern coast of the Japanese Mainland, lies just within the northern end of totality, while the larger Amami Oshima 150 miles further south (half [...]

#7 in a series on our visit to KidZania in Nishinomiya, Japan. Anthony's day so far: gas-station attendant, banking, construction, driver's ed, and journalism. Next it was time for a bit of flight training.

Kidzania's flight-training area also had a plane mockup for flight-attendant training, as well as for kids to take part as customers, giving the flight attendants people to train with...

Anthony was interested in pilot training. That area of the "school" had six mock cockpits, so 12 kids could "train" at once...

When it was time for a new group, the kids got flight jackets and the [...]

The last day of Anthony's school before breaking for the summer -- the Japanese school year starts in April, so summer break is during the middle of a grade -- included a sleepover for all the first graders, right at the school. I went to pick him up at the appointed time on Sunday, but he ended up playing with some friends for a while.

First we piled the kids into some cars and headed over to a nearby river play spot, one that Anthony played at last year. This year, though, he wasn't really in the mood to play [...]

I've just released a new plugin for Adobe Lightroom, for uploading directly to Expono. This joins my other uploaders (for Zenfolio, SmugMug, Flickr, PicasaWeb, and Facebook) on my Lightroom Goodies page. There you'll also find other plugins for various tasks, such as metadata management, geoencoding, proximity search, video-asset management, etc.