Have you seen this video by Ron Howard? You have to watch it. Go now. I’ll wait right here.

It’s just the best video I’ve ever seen. Except my Halloween video from last year.

Lanterns at the Yosakoi Festival in Ikebukuro

D & Me in Nerima, home of Ranma ½

love from Japan!

Here I am. I finally have unlimited internet time (which is good, because I’m out of 100¥ coins for the moment) for an update. I’m in Shin-Yokohama, in a lovely and elegant hotel room, looking over this hilly section of Yokohama and marveling at how the thickest, greenest patches of trees are wedged in so gracefully with houses, warehouses, and train stations.
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Aie! We leave in two days. Preparations have been along the lines of insane, tempered with occasional bouts frenzy. It has gone something like this:

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Couple of weeks ago, I had a lovely birthday. Got this:

and I really, really love it. We took her out to a lovely state park two weekends in a row to get the tires muddy. On our second weekend, which involved a tent as well, we went on a fairly aggressive (for a newbie like me) trail, complete with big ruts and roots. And soon, I steered into a big root to avoid a big tree and ended up with a big ouch when Pinky Lee’s top tube whacked my leg with a Tonya Harding-like efficiency.

Ok, so my tibia doesn’t exactly look like this. X-rays showed no fracture but plenty of swelling of the soft tissues - and even without the fracture I’m in the sort of pain that a fracture might cause. No, it hurts more. I have some good narcotics that whack me out and ice packs which I apply several times a day. I can’t make it worse; I can only manage the pain until it gets better. Which I hope is really soon.

Because we’re going to Japan next Saturday.