We've had several days of rain... it is the rainy season in Japan, after all... and this morning I noticed Aotan (a great blue heron living around here) sitting on a branch over the canal looking miserably wet. He was still there a half hour later, so I got out the camera (and the umbrella) for a picture.

I took a picture from a distance, then came to the closest point on shore. He was still quite a distance away (much further than the mere three feet that separated us the last time we met), so I was surprised when [...]

After the baptism yesterday, Anthony and I got together with some other friends, and ended up going to Hieidaira (a small community nestled in the mountains, just over the border from Kyoto, in Otsu) to see some huge mushrooms.

Nils Ferry's wife Yoshiko and three-year-old son Greg were with us. I've met Nils many times (such as when he took me to some temples in his area to see the autumn colors last fall), but had never had the pleasure of meeting his wife.

The mushrooms were big and fuzzy....

Apparently, they start out as balls, then start to expand [...]

Australian/Japanese friends of mine, Peter and Tomoko, had their third child baptized at mass today. Mariko Theresa was 12 days old at the time, although she has aged an additional 4% in the half day since. 🙂

Their oldest, Joseph, is just three months older than Anthony, so they enjoy playing together. We normally have lunch together after mass, and often go to a playground together after that. Their second child is two-year-old Kyoko.

12-day-old Mariko was, of course, just cute enough to eat (although she's so tiny you'd need to go back for seconds). She slept the whole time, [...]

So, picking up where I left off at the end of my post the other day about last fall's Daimonji Hike, we were at the top of the (short) mountain and sat down for lunch.

At one point, Anthony and Kana-chan sat quietly eating lunch....

The functional part of the sentence above is "one point," because at all other points they were being crazy and silly, as this pair are known for.

It went on and on.

I was giving my relatively-new Nikkor 70-200/2.8 a try, prior to getting its autofocus repaired, using it manually. One of the shots was [...]

Still looking to cool off, so this time I'm going back to the fall when the leaves had just started to turn color, to when Anthony and I went on a hike up to the top of Mt. Daimonji (大文字山) one of the short mountains overlooking eastern Kyoto, Japan. We did it with his school friend Kana, her two brothers, and her dad.

I'd done the same hike the previous year, but without a four year old, much less two.

Kana and Anthony have a wonderful chemistry, as has been seen on my blog before (as they get caught getting [...]