At a small dinner gathering today with some friends from Anthony's preschool, I was shocked to see little May, the younger sister of one of Anthony's classmates, deftly use chopsticks as if she'd been doing so all her life.

I was pleased as could be when Anthony could use chopsticks when he was three, but this little girl just turned two earlier this month. She just grabbed her daddy's chopsticks (adult-sized, no less) and went to town on a wiener without the slightest hint of difficulty. I grabbed my camera, asked her to show me, and I got the picture [...]

Going through some old pictures, I came across this one from a year ago January, when Anthony was three years three months old. When he wakes up and first ventures out of his room, he brings the "friends" he slept with. He brings them to the couch in the livingroom, and in this case, I caught him enroute.

This time he's got Papa George (in blue striped jammies), Shimajiro (yellow tiger), Stubby (big bear behind Shimajiro), George (sticking out from under Stubby), and his bear-face pillow. There's also likely another George in there somewhere.

(Sorry for the [...]

On the drive into the mountains the other day, we were on a twisty mountain road and came across the surreal sight of a bridge leading directly into the rocky face of a mountain.

Taking this bridge would mean a really short trip.

Of course, it's a work in progress. A tunnel will certainly follow, thereby cutting off a long and dangerous segment of the current road....

I expected the road to become dangerous, but what followed the Bridge to Nowhere was actually fairly pleasant, and not narrow nor at all dangerous. A shockingly short 1/3rd mile (500m) later, we [...]

The other day, we went for an impromptu drive up into the northern mountains, although phrasing it that way perhaps makes it sound sounds like more of an adventure than it is. Kyoto is in a valley surrounded on three sides by mountains. You can be in a populated area of the city that gets virtually no snow for years, but a fifteen-minute drive puts you into what seems to be the middle of nowhere, where snows are measured by the meter.

Of course, there's not much snow left anymore, particularly after such a mild winter, but we were pleasantly [...]