Life Goes On...

So, besides two delightful bouts of illness in the last two weeks, nothing exciting is going on here in Japan.  We did have a typhoon yesterday, which was only about a Category 2 Hurricane--nothing to write home about for a former Houstonian, except that I had to bike a good 30 minutes to and from work in the pouring rain yesterday.  And got sick and puked in a storm drain on the way back.

I suppose the main excitement is that family members will be coming to visit in two weeks!  My father, little sister, and step-mom will all be arriving in Tokyo on July 4th, and I'll be meeting them in Kyoto on July 6th for a short, no doubt intensive, weekend vacation.  I've been to Kyoto before, but there are some things on my father's "to see" list that are new to me, so I'm excited for that.  And, heck, I'm mostly just thrilled that the family's coming.

It also may officially be summer in Japan, as I turned on my air conditioner for the first time earlier today.  Again, I was sick, and the eighty-five-degree weather just wasn't really helping things along.

Rice fields are also being planted, which I guess is a sign of the upcoming summer.  Below are pictures of a rice field I walk by every Monday on my way to the branch school, and which I thought would be cool to record as the plants grow throughout the season.  Rice farming is still very fascinating to me--the idea of growing a crop that requires constant flooding is just bizarrely interesting.

May 28th

June 11th

June 18th

June 5th was the day after my delightful one-person bicycle crash, so my boss spoiled me by driving me to the branch school (about 40 minutes away) instead of making me hobble from the train station.  Hence, there is no picture for that day.