Half an hour after the sun went behind the mountains, and 10 minutes after the official sunset when it was already fairly dark, I saw the most amazing, deeply rich maroon/crimson/pink rainbow you could imagine.

At first I caught only the glimpse of one edge of it... it was brilliant, all the more so because of the aforementioned darkness, and perhaps also because the sunlight creating it must have been the deepest of the reds of sunset (seeing how the sun had set 10 minutes prior, it was made with the last rays still hitting misting rain from the upper [...]

While Anthony and I were in The States this summer, Fumie got a chance to visit with a friend she met while we lived in Cupertino, Yoppu-san, who now lives near Tokyo. She has a son, Maho-kun, who is a week older than Anthony.

During the meeting this summer, Maho-kun sent along a present for Anthony, who got to open it today just before bedtime. Having used phrases like "unbridled joy" too much lately, I'll leave these without captions and let them speak for themselves...

Thanks Maho-kun!

I was a zombie for a couple of days after returning to Kyoto, despite being able to sleep soon after landing. I got a good night's sleep and awoke at 6:30 feeling refreshed. I took the haruka express train home, but soon started feeling tired again. Despite being tired, I didn't sleep much that next evening, waking up at 2:30am and was a zombie for all of yesterday. I was so tired it hurt.

Finally, I slept well last night, and today was much better.

One nice moment the other day was when Fumie pulled out an old classic Japanese [...]

Anthony and I returned home to Japan yesterday after a month at my folks' place in Ohio. The return trip was substantially longer than the flight out, and much more gruleing than last year's return to Kyoto because it included a cross-country leg before the trans-pacific flight.

Our trip started with a 4:00am wake-up-call in Cleveland, Ohio, with us finally walking out of customs/immigration at Kansai International 25 and a half hours later. It was a long journey, but to see Fumie -- and to see how Anthony ran to her and jumped into her arms -- was certainly worth [...]

Anthony and I are heading back to Japan tomorrow, leaving this afternoon to stay at Cleveland's airport hotel because the flight leaves tomorrow at 6am (ugh!).

So, no new posts for the next few days...