It's been several days since we got back from Ishigaki Island, in the far south of Japan, but I've still not had a chance to even look at most of my photos. Just. Too. Busy. But here are a few to illustrate the trip down...

The Okinawa mainland is an island about 80 miles long, but Okinawa is actually a string of what must be thousands of islands that stretches in an arc for about 450 miles. In the photo above, we're about 40 miles north of the main airport, which is at the extreme southern end of the island. [...]

We got back late this evening from a four-day trip to Ishigaki Island, in the far south of Japan (just 20 miles shy of Japan's southernmost latitude). We left on Thursday, and 1,200 images and 135,883 GPS trackpoints later, we're back, and tired because we're up way past our normal bedtime, which has shifted several hours earlier since Anthony started first grade.

The island in the photo above is not where we stayed. It's 250 miles from where we stayed; I snapped it just after takeoff from Naha, on the main island of Okinawa, on the way to Ishigaki.

From [...]

Japan is known as an "Island Nation" because it does not share a border with any country. That tends to make you feel that domestic travel is simple and close to home, even if you actually travel some distance, because you never leave "the island". Domestic travel feels less expensive, too: Japan is a relatively small country, and so a trip to a far-flung corner of it is just a bigger version of a trip to the local convenience store.

But, of course, "Island Nation" really should be plural, "Islands Nation", because there are many islands. There are the four [...]
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One of the most wonderful aspects of Kyoto is that it has so many treasures – usually hidden in plain sight – such that you never run out of new discoveries. Today was yet another day of discovery for me, right in my own backyard.

10 minutes north by bicycle from my place is a small tree-covered outcropping called yoshidayama (Mt. Yoshida). I've sort of noticed it over the years, having driven near and around it often, but it's always been one of those things that I never actually paid much attention to. When you're driving by, it seems more [...]

A lot of prep went into Anthony starting first grade, mostly by Fumie. Pretty much every single item he brings – and he brings a lot – must have his name on it.   Every.   Single.   Item.   That means a box of 16 crayons requires 17 names (one for the box, and one for each crayon).

Fumie hand-wrote his name directly on the sleeves of the crayons above, but for the longer, sleeveless crayon-pens below, she had to write his name on stickers that she then attached...

She had to do this for every pen, every notebook, every chopstick, every pair [...]