We had a most wonderful day yesterday.

It was a combination of:

My cold finally getting mostly better. (It turns out it was a common upper-respiratory infection, for which antibiotics seem to be working). It was shorts-and-T-shirt weather, the first such day this year. It was the first day in ages where no school event was scheduled or on the immediate horizon.

We celebrated by venturing out to a place we'd heard of but had never been, a small (180-acre) 30-year-old man-made island in the south of Lake Biwa with the imposing name yabasekihantou (矢橋帰帆島 – website).

Perhaps a third [...]

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Anthony has almost doubled in age since he started preschool, and today his tenure as a kindergartener ended. He graduated preschool today, and starts first grade next month.

Anthony looks sharp in a suit, but a kid should look like a kid, so the shorts Fumie selected maintain that perfect balance of "dressed up" and "still a kid". It's the same ensemble that Curious George modeled a few weeks ago, with a real necktie and all.

The ceremony wasn't too long, with some speeches and songs, but eventually the kids were called up in alphabetical order, and soon it was [...]

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I was in the supermarket yesterday and did a double-take when I saw a basket of volleyball-sized grapefruit. They were huge, twice the size of any grapefruit I'd ever seen.

Except they weren't grapefruit. The sign called them banpeiyu (晩白柚). For $6, I had to pick one up.

It turns out that they're a variety of something called Pomelo, a citrus fruit that I had never heard of. This particular variety comes from Viet Nam.

When I got home, I told Anthony that I had a surprise, had him close his eyes, and place it on the table in front [...]

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Even if I weren't down with a nasty cold, I'd never be able to come up with a title that does this sequence justice.

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Congratulations to my brother Alan and his wife, Natalie, who welcomed little Titi to their family this morning. 6lbs 6oz, 20 ¼" long (2.74kg, 51cm). They weren't expecting her so soon – she's a week early – but all are doing well.

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