I was feeling just dandy last Saturday morning while we awaited the airport shuttle to pick us up to start a five-day mini vacation to a somewhat tropical island in southern Japan, so I was more than a little dismayed when after hauling the luggage down to the van and settling into my seat that I suddenly realized that my cold – one that plagued me for a month but had, I thought, been over for the last week – had returned with the almost audible thud of a proverbial ton of bricks hitting me. I suddenly felt miserable, and [...]

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Anthony and I visited Zak and his 3-and-a-half-year-old son Gen for a day of play, including a trip to the same park in Otsu City that Anthony and Monet played in last week (that I mentioned on my Overwhelmed: an Embarrassment of Riches post).

The two boys spent most of the time playing in the water.

At this point they started to walk away on the path (a path that leads down to a busy street), so I yelled down for them to come back. Three-year-old Gen, being the three-year-old that he is, turned heel and started running away, so [...]

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I came down with a cold the morning of the snow in Kyoto the other day, likely because I spent the previous day at a kids' play spot with Anthony. Anywhere where kids congregate is a human petri dish of microbial fun, so I probably picked up something then.

Kyoto City has a wonderful play spot for infants and preschoolers, the Play Land at its Kodomo Miraikan ("hall for children's future"), and Anthony has been enjoying it for the last four years. Zak invited us to come to Otsu City's version of the same thing, and I was astounded at [...]

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It's snowing like gangbusters this evening in Kyoto, and the forecast is more through tomorrow afternoon, so I'm hoping to wake up to a wonderful blanket of snow, a better version of the light snow that made for some wonderful pictures at the Heian Shrine earlier in the week.

The shots on today's post are from that same outing last week, of the Jingu Michi Street bridge over the Kyoto Biwako Canal, which is between our place and the shrine. The bright orange sides of the bridge offered the first thing for Anthony to push snow from once we left [...]

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Anthony and George — Anthony's drawing from yesterday morning —
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