In Nihon

I'm in Japan for another week visiting the main Tamagawa campus in Tokyo. All is well, however oddly enough even in this city of 20+ million, it can get lonely. I miss Miki & Mama and everyday wish they could be here too.

The weather here has been quite nice, compared to what's been falling on Vancouver Island - a constant back-and-forth between snow, rain or sleet, from what I hear. The fall colours here in Tokyo are still quite nice, beautiful actually. The temperature has been hovering in the low teens since I arrived and the sun is out today.

It's Saturday and I'm sitting in my hotel room, 10 floors up over Machida City. I ventured out this morning to find some breakfast and luckily happened upon a "fast food" Japanese-style restaurant that served a cheap ($5) traditional breakfast of rice, grilled salmon, miso soup, carrot & burdock root salad, seaweed and sweet-marinated pork strips. Exactly what I was looking for.

I've got a few shopping items to look for today and I may hop a train later to the town of Nakanoshima to see the recenlty re-built rock gym that Ericka and I were members of when we lived here. Later this evening I'm meeting an adult student I used to teach (7 years ago now!) at Tamagawa's Continuing Education Dept.

Well, I'm off. I need some tea and I may find a spot in the sun to plop down a puruse the newspaper and people watch. Until next time... "jya ne".

Slug O' Lantern

We put the pumpkins out to pasture a few weeks ago and the slugs finally got to them. Miki was quite impressed this past summer when we spied a slug on our lawn happily munching a leaf, never mind her reaction when she saw the little buggers plastered on her kitty jack o' lantern!

Until then..."Sayonara".

Big Leaf Maple

With an almost-two-year-old and the arrival of autumn the order of the day was a leaf pile. Who doesn't recall (other than Floridians & Californians) a brisk fall day, jack-o-lanterns, Halloween and a big, crunchy mound of leaves? As soon as Mama & Papa had the pile big enough, Miki leaped and kicked her way in...

Leaves, Leaves, Leaves

We are in Canada afterall and the big leaf maple trees abound. It's taken many hours over the various weekends to get the fallen leaves raked up and we didn't waste the opportunity to show Miki how much fun a big 'ol pile of leaves can be.

It definitely brought back memories for me. When I was growing up we had a HUGE sugar maple on our property that must have contained as many leaves on that single tree as all the trees at my house combined. Dad, I now know what you went thru during that gathering process and thanks for making the gargantuan effort to rake all those leaves for Heath and I to play in. I probably owe you a new rake.

Little Tikes Car

A friend's son outgrew his Little Tikes car this summer so they passed it onto Miki. She repeatedly tried to "drive" it thru our raked pile of leaves and insisted on parking it smack in the middle.

Fall Photos

Just a few random photos taken this fall. We "baby-sat" a small brood of chickens one weekend, hosted a Halloween party for Miki & friends, dressed her up as a ladybug (or was that a butterfly?) and carved some pumpkins with a group of students who happened to be on campus towards the end of October.