O-Fuji Matsuri

Literally, Wisteria Festival.

The last weekend in April I went to the nearby town of Kurogi with some friends for their annual Wisteria Festival. It was fun. Lots of flowers everywhere. The whole town smelled really nice. Here's a few pictures. (woo hoo!)


Tile placed in the sidewalk. The writing says "Kurogi Big Wisteria." This one's for you, Mom.


The wisteria is generally grown on these overhead lattice structures. Walking around had sort of a weird cave-like feeling to it. Only it smelled much nicer. According to the sign, that particular wisteria plant (tree?) is over 600 year old.


Another tree. This one was a young 'un. Only 400 years old. Or so the sign said.



Lastly, here's me and my friend Lynn, hamming it up amongst the Wisteria blossoms. For you folks at home, yes, I have gotten quite fat. I'm working on it.

That's all for now. Photography criticism is always appreciated.

Grrr... stupid technology... and other news

Ok, I was going to post pictures this evening. (No, really! I swear! I edited them and everything!) But I got a crappy error message trying to upload the files. I've been using Picassa to upload photos, cause it's easy, and I don't want anyone to accuse me of putting my CS degree to good use. Now it is "failing to initialize" and directing me to reinstall. I don't feel like dealing with it right now, but I should have some time this weekend. It probably has to do with the increasing number of bad sectors on my harddrive and all of the random errors that sound suspiciously like my computer's swan song. *ouch* I may break down and buy a Japanese machine. Having the OS in Japanese would no doubt annoy me, but on the plus side, the key board configuration makes typing Japanese a heck of a lot easier.

Anyhow, the pictures were from the Wisteria festival in nearby Kurogi. Pretty purple flowers. Just imagine them for now.

Moving on... I had a job interview last Wednesday. I think it went pretty well. It's for sort of a lateral promotion that would involve doing more administrative work and less teaching. I would have to move to a different area of the prefecture. It's more urban area, but I would have the hassle of moving.

Lastly, did anyone besides Mike see the comment thread with the other "Melissa in Japan"? Strange coincidence. Anyhow, check it out here.

For those of you who still read this (both of you), I have pictures of Nagasaki to post after I get Kurogi up.