The second day of our trip to Ishigaki Island in the far south of Japan was the one I was really looking forward to, because we planned to just drive around and check out the views.

Ishigaki is an oddly-shaped island that's about 21 miles long at its longest diagonal....

And it has generally wide, modern roads, so getting around is quick if you ignore the ridiculous 25mph speed limit. Our hotel was in the south-west, so for today's trip we planned on cutting a diagonal through the main part, then up the panhandle that is sometimes only a few [...]

Anthony spent much of the flights back from Ishigaki yesterday looking through a catalog of toys and costumes that Grandma had included in a recent package. Anthony loves toy catalogs, just to check things out and to practice saying "I want this!".

The particular catalog yesterday had lots of costumes, including about every superhero and villain in western culture, and he was quite interested in who among them were good and who was bad. Superman: good. The Joker: bad. Some, like Iron Man, I just didn't know because I don't know those stories.

This morning he was still interested in [...]

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 [...]

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.

Anthony officially started first grade today. Today was just the entrance ceremony; tomorrow, he starts class.

Before heading off, we asked Fumie's mom to take a picture of us in front of the cherry blossoms next to our building.

The sign welcomes us to the elementary-school entrance ceremony. This was at the front gate of the school, which was a common spot to take pictures. The layout of things placed the sun directly into your eyes, so the results were pretty bad all around.

Once inside, the Anthony switched to his inside shoes (and we switched to slippers that we'd [...]