After 430km of driving, I'm ready for a snooze...

Today was a laid back Saturday for me. Anthony was on a trip with his grandparents and Fumie was working on ballet, so I stayed home to try to make a dent in the unending backlog of stuff I'm behind on. But with the blossoms starting to come out in force and the temperature approaching 20°C (66°F), I couldn't resist to step outside a bit with the camera. The mood outside was wonderfully relaxed, an uncrowded, low-key version of the cherry-blossom joie de vivre that I've written about before. It was really nice. I expect next weekend will be the [...]

Well, perhaps not the first in all of Japan, considering that the cherry-blossom season can start in early January in the southern islands, and also not first considering that some varieties of cherry have been blossoming for weeks already here in Kyoto, but this morning I found the first cherry blossom in the local area, which is populated with Japan's "standard" Yoshino Cherry.

I was happy to have noticed the one single blossom among all the buds on all the trees around. By the time I returned from some errands, more had appeared, but this was the lone blossom at [...]

Just as last year, Anthony's class made their own yearbook, with the cover composed of self portraits by each kid and the teacher. The Japanese school year runs April to March, so now they're in the spring break between grades. Anthony starts third grade in a couple of weeks.

The quality of many kids' self portraits made a huge leap from last year. Especially noteworthy are the girls' drawings, all of which display higher artistic merit than anything I could draw.

Anthony's innate talents, like me, appear to be elsewhere, but unlike me, he makes up for it with cuteness...

In a week the area of Kyoto around where I live will be packed with blossoms and packed with people enjoying them, but for the moment things are pretty sparse...

The cherry-blossom timelapse that I posted a few years ago starts on this date, and if the same schedule holds (which it normally does... the blossom season being early or late by more than a day is notable news) shows that by a week from now, the trees will be well on their way toward full bloom. Full bloom will likely hit in about 10 or 11 days.

At the [...]