The swine-flu hysteria that's gripped the world of late came to Japan a week or so ago. A few days ago, thousands of schools in Kobe (two hours away), Osaka (an hour away), and Shiga (just over the mountains) were closed, and last night at 10:30, we got a message from Anthony's school that they, too, would close today. It seems a 10-year-old at another school in Kyoto got the flu.

This morning, we got word that Anthony's school would be closed for the next week, as are all schools in Kyoto.

I can understand not wanting to spread the [...]
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Anthony spent much of the flights back from Ishigaki yesterday looking through a catalog of toys and costumes that Grandma had included in a recent package. Anthony loves toy catalogs, just to check things out and to practice saying "I want this!".

The particular catalog yesterday had lots of costumes, including about every superhero and villain in western culture, and he was quite interested in who among them were good and who was bad. Superman: good. The Joker: bad. Some, like Iron Man, I just didn't know because I don't know those stories.

This morning he was still interested in [...]

Japan is known as an "Island Nation" because it does not share a border with any country. That tends to make you feel that domestic travel is simple and close to home, even if you actually travel some distance, because you never leave "the island". Domestic travel feels less expensive, too: Japan is a relatively small country, and so a trip to a far-flung corner of it is just a bigger version of a trip to the local convenience store.

But, of course, "Island Nation" really should be plural, "Islands Nation", because there are many islands. There are the four [...]
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After our visit yesterday to Kyoto's Konzou Temple, Anthony and I headed all the way across Kyoto, around some small mountains, and into Otsu City to play in the park with his friend Gen. They have a great park across from their place that we've visited many times.

Gen's little sister, Tamaki-chan, has a very important quality that every child should have: she likes me. Even though her Daddy had to wake her up from a long nap and she was a bit pouty, her puzzling like of me allowed her to put up with me and my camera.

She [...]

Today was a really lovely day... warmer and less crowded than yesterday. So, of course, I stayed in all day working on my Lightroom plugins. But I did take some pictures during the day yesterday, in addition to the cherry blossoms at dusk that I've already posted, so I'll share some in this post.

Most regular cherry trees in this area are at 50%-70% full bloom, but the trees right outside my window are closer to 100%, so they made for a nice view, and attracted the weekend crowds. Most everyone had a camera.

The picture above includes almost all [...]