There's always one

The jet lag hasn't been too bad, and I've spent my first few days in and around Tokyo, so I haven't had the early morning or travel time to injure my fingers writing long messages on the phone. I've done very little in the way of sightseeing so far, mainly hanging out with friends and seeing clients. It doesn't help that I rented a diffent model of phone and the keyboard is a pain to use.

Tokyo is warm, in the low twenties, and other than seeing people I've been getting lost (despite my excellent map book), picking up some Xmas and birthday presents, and playing many rounds of Uno Junior with a 4 and a 6 year old when they aren't watching or reinacting the latest Ultraman or Kamen Rider series. The older brother can tell you which Ultraman series anything appeared in, and the little brother went to a Halloween party as an Ultraman monster (Gomez). He wore his cardboard claws, made that morning by his mom, all through breakfast, sofly roaring 'ga-oh' with a big smile on his face.

Last full day in Tokyo today, more clients and friends to meet, then tomorrow morning I'm off to Nagoya and Kyoto.

Going to seed

Since I only got three plants out of my pack of 500 shiso seeds, I haven't been picking the leaves off that often as you can't do that much with so few. And now - flowers!

So, I don't know what this means for the leaves, but maybe I'll get some seeds for next year. We'll see!

Cows!

I managed to get out for a few walks last week, as I was going a bit mad being tied down at my desk all day with a big translation project and making preparations for both our trip to Japan and himself's trip back to the UK to pick up his bike.

But it was a wonderful walk the days I did do it - just took the train two stops up and got off and walked back - and the weather was perfect. Not like today, when it was throwing it down. We had a bit of a storm last night that knocked over one of my flower boxes and ripped a branch out of one of the trees in the garden.

And I had an extra special treat on one of the days - two teenage girls were moving cows from one field to another one across the river! They drove one cow in to the river and then ran over the bridge to coax it across - and the rest followed in their own good time, over the course of about 10 minutes. I wasn't the only one who stopped to watch it, and there were also two herons and a dozen paragliders in attendance. I was particularly impressed by how calm the dogs being walked on both sides of the river were, I only heard one bark. One of them even gave me a little 'kiss' both times he went by!