It's rainy season in Tokyo...

...and this year it's been so dry I've not even had a good reason to wear my new rain boots yet. I've heard that we're now into the second week of rainy season, but we've only had two days of rain. Students tell me that during the usual rainy season it rains every day for two or three weeks, but this June there has been unseasonably warm and dry weather. We've got all of the humidity and none of the rain; during the day, humidity hovers at about 70-80% and temperatures about 85°F. Pretty nice blue skies though. I took the picture just this morning from my balcony. (Also note-worthy: my neighbor's new pink paint job...)

Fuji-san ni ikimashita

Yesterday I went on my long-awaited trip to Mt. Fuji. Unfortunately, the weather forecast wasn't as accurate as I'd hoped. It turned out that the mountain--which is so large it can sometimes be seen 60 miles away in Tokyo--was so completely covered in clouds that you couldn't see it from the city at its base. I had a walk around the town for a few hours and got to see one of the nearby lakes, so it wasn't altogether a disappointment. Here are a couple of pictures:



Photos:

• Left: a view of the mountains across Kawaguchi-ko (Lake Kawaguchi)
• Right: somewhere behind those clouds is the biggest mountain in Japan. If you look very closely on the right side of the photo, just between the train cables and the rooftops, you can see a little bit of snow on the side of the mountain. The darker color that runs across the entire photo, immediately above the houses, is the base of the mountain. That's about as much as I saw all afternoon.

Family Visit, part 3

Here are a few more pics from my family's visit a couple weeks ago:





Photos:

• Top left: though the Imperial Palace in Tokyo is only open to the public on two days each year, we could still see a little bit from across the moat.
• Top right: the next day, my sister and I went to Nikko (my first trip out of the city!). This is a picture of rice fields as viewed from the train on the way there.
• Middle left: this is a picture you'll be hard pressed to find elsewhere. I took it in the "No photos" area of a temple when we we the only people around...I just couldn't resist. But I also forgot to turn off the flash on my camera, so when the flash reflected off all that gold, let's just say we made a quick exit.
• Middle right: at the entrance to Nikko's Toshogu Shrine. If you want to see more of Nikko, use this link--they've published the whole guidebook online.
• Bottom left: the world famous "Hear no evil, Speak no evil, See no evil" monkeys actually come from this carving on the Imperial Stable at Toshogu Shrine.
• Bottom right: the sunset over the mountains, as seen from the train on the way home.