I'm so buried with work that I haven't even read email for a few days, but took a few minutes to check out Hayaku: A Time Lapse Journey Through Japan, a short but intensively beautiful video by Brad Kremer, and was so glad I did... it's a stunning video, even if you have no particular interest in Japan.

You can watch it at normal quality right here, but I'd recommend viewing the high-def version at Vimeo, in full screen....

As beautiful as it is at face value, it's 100× more so if you consider the effort and technical skill that [...]

As I mentioned in the previous post, on Friday we went to KidZania, a wonderful place covered in these many posts.

Unlike the first time, which was crammed full of families at absolute capacity, this time was on a school day that Anthony had off, and there were only about half the kids (capacity is 800 kids, and there were about 400, we were told). The breathing room made it much more enjoyable, especially for the parents because you could move easily when you wanted, and sit when you wanted. For the kids, there was a lot less waiting... often, [...]

(All these photos are through multiple layers of glass from outside the studio, so sorry about the quality.)

Anthony did a solo radio show today for "Funky 802" (FM802, a popular Osaka pop radio station). It was his first time on the radio, and though he started a bit rough, he quickly warmed up to it.

( Either that, or we went to KidZania for the day. )

Continued here...

As I wrote in yesterday's post about the doggy funeral, we had lunch at a great cafe. In the southern part of Shiga Prefecture, perhaps an hour's drive from Kyoto, is a private business called Sunainosato (寿長生の郷), which consists of a restaurant, a cafe, and a confectionery, all on 50 acres of wonderfully wooded land in the countryside.

The grounds are open as if it were a public park, and they're very nice.

The little drop-off shelter near the parking lot illustrates the simple, understated class of the entire site.

From there, one enters a small orchard that has more [...]

Fumie's folks' dog, Huck, died last month, aged exactly 17 years 8 months, which made him one very old puppy. I think Fumie had just started high school when he joined their family.

He'd been in poor health for a long time, since prior to me getting any kind of photographic skill, so the best photo I could find was a blurry crop from an old snapshot.

I'm not sure what people normally do in Japan when a pet dies and they don't have a yard to bury him in (come to think of it, I don't know what people [...]