We had a most wonderful day yesterday.

It was a combination of:

My cold finally getting mostly better. (It turns out it was a common upper-respiratory infection, for which antibiotics seem to be working). It was shorts-and-T-shirt weather, the first such day this year. It was the first day in ages where no school event was scheduled or on the immediate horizon.

We celebrated by venturing out to a place we'd heard of but had never been, a small (180-acre) 30-year-old man-made island in the south of Lake Biwa with the imposing name yabasekihantou (矢橋帰帆島 – website).

Perhaps a third [...]

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Anthony has almost doubled in age since he started preschool, and today his tenure as a kindergartener ended. He graduated preschool today, and starts first grade next month.

Anthony looks sharp in a suit, but a kid should look like a kid, so the shorts Fumie selected maintain that perfect balance of "dressed up" and "still a kid". It's the same ensemble that Curious George modeled a few weeks ago, with a real necktie and all.

The ceremony wasn't too long, with some speeches and songs, but eventually the kids were called up in alphabetical order, and soon it was [...]

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I was in the supermarket yesterday and did a double-take when I saw a basket of volleyball-sized grapefruit. They were huge, twice the size of any grapefruit I'd ever seen.

Except they weren't grapefruit. The sign called them banpeiyu (晩白柚). For $6, I had to pick one up.

It turns out that they're a variety of something called Pomelo, a citrus fruit that I had never heard of. This particular variety comes from Viet Nam.

When I got home, I told Anthony that I had a surprise, had him close his eyes, and place it on the table in front [...]

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So, I've still got my cold, although it's finally starting to get better. Hence, fairly light posts lately, and this one is no exception. It's a collection of photos from the same April 5th stroll last year that produced Cherry-Blossom Full Bloom Hits Kyoto and Cherry-Blossom Joie de Vivre in Kyoto, as well as the "darker-side" post, The Hanami was Nice, But.... It was a fruitful day, so here are a few more pictures that will serve as a Cherry-Blossom Preview.

The area near my place is glorious during cherry-blossom season, but the ugly cinderblock wall often spoiled photos, so [...]

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On the way to Anthony's first ski experience last month, I took a route that runs along Lake Biwa (and past Shirohige Shrine), but on the way home I used a mountain route, and took the opportunity to explore something I'd seen driving by in the past...

In the middle of the mountains, barely visible off to the side of the road among the nothingness that Route 367 winds through, you briefly see this innocuous set of steps...

And at the top this sign...

And then this:

Well, it starts off steep, but then it looks to flatten off. Let's [...]

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