So, picking up from yesterday where I recapped our spring trip to Ishigaki Island in the far south of Japan, and our side excursion to the culturally unique Taketomi Island....

Taketomi's tourist draw, besides the quaint little town, are tours through it in carts pulled by water buffalo. (Why water buffalo? No idea.) There were maybe a dozen water buffalo we could see, two or three in active service.

I don't have many pictures from our ride, but wish I did because our tour guide (and caretaker of our buffalo, whose name he told us but I've now forgotten) was [...]

Last spring we made a short trip to Ishigaki Island in the far south of Japan, just this side of Taiwan. I posted about the trip there and the amazing first sunset and first dinner, some zero light night photography. And more. And that was just from the first day of the trip.

The second day generated nine posts, including some beautiful vistas, a secluded beach, some dynamic weather at a lighthouse, a sunset dip in the pool, a lively "flame & rain" dinner, and a retrospective through Anthony's eyes.

I barely started posting about the third day, having only [...]

After getting ready for Santa, Anthony went to bed at about 8:30pm. I happened to wake up a bit before 4am and noticed that Anthony was already up, had already confirmed that Santa had visited, had already opened the small present he's allowed to open when he wakes up, had played with it, grown tired of it, and was entertaining himself with a video. At 3:55am.

With effort, against his protests of "I'm not tired!", I got him back to bed, and soon he was sleeping again. Me too.

We had a nice little presents time, with Fumie's folks stopping [...]

Among the seemingly infinite variety of objects in the gardens behind the Nishimura Stone Lanterns stone-carving workshop in the mountains of north-east Kyoto, Japan, I was particularly taken with the curved pieces. And of these, there was quite a variety, including water basins, pedestal tops, lantern-top adornments, and sloping roofs like the one in the photo above.

The roof of this piece looks thin and delicate, but the original block of stone it was made from must have necessarily been thick and substantial, only to surrender most of its mass to the carver's chisel. The bulk of that original block [...]

Well, my previous stone-related "What am I?" quiz was apparently too difficult for everyone, so here's a softy....

I found this stone lantern among the hundreds of odd-shaped and beautiful stone carvings in the gardens behind the Nishimura Stone Lanterns workshop. Those familiar with the Star Wars™ world (or with the vast array of Star Wars™ toys their kids might leave underfoot) will likely find that these photos call to mind the Imperial Star Destroyers from the original movies.... especially after I write "Imperial Star Destroyer" several times. 🙂

I would assume that this was carved before any of the [...]