I have been to Japan several times now. Each trip has been enjoyable and thought provoking. Being married to a Japanese means that I do not see just the tourist areas, but instead have had the opportunity to see daily Japanese life. First, I love japanese food (that is an understatement), so that makes staying there quite easy. Second, well I mentioned it already, I am married to a Japanese.

I will post some of my journals from the trips over the past year at some point soon. Actually, that is another reason why I started to put this site together. The main banner for this site (the standard design) is from a shot I took from Fujisawa city where my inlaws live. It was during December 2003. I don’t speak Japanese yet, but am planning on learning (well, I have been studying on my own, but it is slow going, until I finish my grad degree). At any rate, I mentioned in conversation with my wife’s family, that I was going out to take a picture of Mt Fuji from the roof of their apartment (which my wife translated) and her dad laughed because he did not think I would get much. I went up on the roof of the apartment and could see Fuji-san quite clearly and took some good shots. As I said above, I will post more pics and text when I have time.

This is the start of a trip that we took in December/January of 2003/2004. Coming from Chicago to Narita does induce jet lag, which the first trip I made to Japan caused me to be sick for a week. Now after half a dozen trips, I am able to adjust after a few days. I found that if I can sleep most of the flight, that it takes less than a day to adjust. Having a toddler prevents that from happening on this trip. The flight crosses the international date line, so tomorrow is now today. That is, Chicago is still on yesterday’s date. It is kind of fun to juxtapose the thought of this small sliver of time travel that we may experience on earth.

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