Here are some more pictures from last week's day trip to Awaji Island's Awaji Hana Sajiki ("Awaji Flower Review"), which I wrote about in last week's "A Few Flowers in Awaji" post.

When we arrived after a two-hour drive, we found a parking lot mostly free of cars, and completely free of cost, which was a very nice bonus. The first flowers you see upon leaving the parking lot is this somewhat sparse field...

Frankly, it was a bit disappointing to see such a scraggly field after such a long drive, though at least it was big. The disappointment totally [...]

We all took the bus together last Thursday to the Anthony's first-grade entrance ceremony.

On Friday, his first day of school, I rode the bus with him.

On Monday (yesterday), he rode the bus himself while I followed along on the scooter "just in case", as we had practiced during spring break.

Today he went on the bus all by himself.

As I mentioned in the previous post, after the other day's visit to the far-west-Kyoto mountain Konzou Temple, we scooted over to a park in Otsu City. There were some rollerbladers, which is not uncommon for that park on a weekend, but they included one not quite of this world...

I really have no comment...

Fueled by an unheard-of 14 hours of sleep last night (I went to bed at 7pm! Got up at 9am!! First time anything like this in.... hmmm, how old is Anthony?), I escaped the crush of tourists enjoying the cherry blossoms in my area and took Anthony on a trip across Kyoto and into the mountains to visit the Konzou Temple (金蔵寺), a temple I first visited somewhat by chance during my bamboo-filled Western-Kyoto Mountain Drive that I posted about two months ago.

I didn't mention the temple by name in that post because I thought I'd follow up with [...]

Having a kid in elementary school means a new set of hours for the parents, and as part of that I found myself wandering around outside after returning from school. (Parents accompany first graders to school for the first few days; there are no school busses, so the vast majority of kids take the subway or bus, all by themselves, so the parents go for the first few days to ensure they're settled.)

I got off the bus one stop early to walk around the grounds of the municipal museum of art, which is pretty this time of year. (Clicking [...]