Fumie's mom took Anthony on a helicopter ride yesterday, the five-minute flight time "Bay Area Course" offered by Ogawa Air (小川航空) in Osaka.

Here are some pics from her cell-phone camera...

Harnessed Up Parking Lot Ready to Go! Post-Flight Photo-Op

The flight was only five minutes, but that's more than I've ever done. In fact, prior to yesterday, I'd known only one person who had ever been in a helicopter (20+ years ago, in the military, where he spent the flight throwing up, or, at least, wanting to).

As for me, I'd love to do it sometime but it's ridiculously [...]

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The weather has been really nice lately, and with my cold improving enough to move around, I thought it'd do me good to get out and enjoy the fresh air. Fumie had been watching Anthony most of the day, so I took the opportunity to take him with me to the park, him to ride his bike and me to take a nap on a bench.

I didn't bring my camera (that whole "being sick" thing has its downsides), but was able to dip into my archives for photos to illustrate today's post.

The bench I snoozed on is the [...]

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After a cold snap over the last couple of weeks, the weather in Kyoto has really turned nice, with temperatures in the upper 70s and clear skies. My cold is starting to get better, and being outside just a bit in the glorious weather felt wonderful.

We're still six weeks away from the peak foliage season in Kyoto, so I thought today I'd continue from the Kyoto Fall Foliage Preview with a few shots taken around my place last December 2nd...

That last one is certainly least, but I like the layered colors.

Lots more Kyoto Foliage Fireworks from years [...]

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I have been slammed with a cold since yesterday, so today just a short post with some pics from the underground world around Osaka Train Station that I took after my trip to the Nikon Service Center last week (to have my D700 checked... they said it's my memory card, and to have the rubber grip on my D200 replaced).

One of the underground passages near the station had this pleasant waterfall wall...

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Today's post is an essentially-random collection of pictures.

A view of Mt. Fuji, taken with my point-n-shoot from the window of a shinkansen (bullet train) traveling at about 250kph. This was from a trip about a year ago to Tokyo to see Kousuke Atari in concert.

A point of trivia: I believe the river you can see in the background is an electrical dividing line: household current to the east of the river (Tokyo, Nagano, Sapporo...) is 50Hz, while that to the west (Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya, Hiroshima, Amami....) is 60Hz. The difference matters less with modern equipment, but old clocks [...]

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