The Japan Times (English-language daily in Japan) has an article today about a plan to photograph and fingerprint foreigners entering Japan. It had been in the works for some time, and has been a topic of some debate, but now it's law.

Here are some excerpts:

Diet passes bill to take foreigners' prints, pics

By Masami Ito

A bill requiring fingerprinting and photographing of foreigners upon entry to Japan was passed Wednesday as a way to prevent terrorism.

An estimated 6 million to 7 million foreigners entering Japan every year will be obliged to have their fingerprints and [...]

The sun rose at 4:49 this morning here in Kyoto. Ugh.

It was the first time so far this year that the sun rose before 5:00am. Unfortunately, it won't be the last -- the sunrise gets steadily earlier until it hits 4:42am and stays there for most of June. It won't rise during the 5:00 hour again until late July.

The picture to the right is from my GPS unit, which can compute the theoretical sunrise/sunset data for any point on earth. The point in question today is my apartment.

All this early sunrise stuff is [...]

Here's a photo which I think captures a lot of Japan:

I took this near Daigo Temple in Yamashina, Kyoto, Japan, after visiting the temple during cherry-blossom season last month.

The big yellow sign says "Ramen" (as in "noodles"), and is for a shop on a major street that you can't otherwise see in the picture. The thing that looks like a cemetery is a cemetery, although there are no bodies, just monuments and likely some ashes.

As a bonus quintessentially Japanese thing, in the very upper right, you can see some futons hanging over [...]

This picture doesn't look like much when it's small, but click on it for a larger (1,600 × 1,200) version suitable for what I think is a lovely desktop background. It's from our trip to the Takaragaike Children's Park, mentioned in the previous post.

UPDATE: more cherry-blossom backgrounds from the same trip.

Today we went up to the Takaragaike Children's Park, a wonderful playground with lots of fun things for young kids (those older than elementary-school age are not allowed in unless accompanied by someone in elementary school or younger).

It's in a cooler area of Kyoto than we are (they get a fair amount more snow during the winter, for example; as the blog of Nils, who lives up there, will attest). Being cooler, some of their cherry blossoms are peaking and fading a bit later than ours.

Here's a tree right between the "petals fallen" and "leaves [...]