Daley-sensei's Adventures in Himeji, Japan.

I went to Osaka on March 8th for the first day of a fifteen-day Sumo Wrestling tournament. A lot of my colleagues from Arizona and Australia went, and we'd reserved our tickets nearly two months prior. It was well worth the preparation, though! I left for Osaka early in the morning, so that I could spend time admiring the famous plum garden at Osaka Castle. It was a lovely day, and the blossoms were starting to reach their peak! It was quite crowded, but the atmosphere was festive, and once you worked your way closer to the center of the garden the paths thinned out a bit. The people-watching was nearly as amusing as the blossom-viewing, and I heard snippets of many different languages while winding my way through the paths. This is a photo of one of the outer buildings, over the outer moat. The moat is gigantic!  Osaka Castle was crowded, and it's a modern reconstruction of the original building, but it's still stunning! Although it is tricky to photograph...

I know, I know, I'm really late on updating this. For over the last month, my internet has been sporadic, and most days I was happy if it took less than 2-3 minutes to attach a .pdf to an email. For the first time, I was sitting around wanting to update my blog, but I didn't have the capability to do so! However, this week my connection seems to have returned to normal, so I can start catching up on uploading all of my photographs! I have been pretty busy this March, though I did explore a bit in February, too. February was mostly cold and grey, but I made one last trip to the Kobo-san market in Kyoto, and let myself go crazy and buy all of the kimonos that caught my eye! I finished the day with two silk kimonos (1,000 yen each) and three very high-quality obis. No idea where I'll put my collection when I return to Arizona come August, but I'll figure something out, I'm sure... The plum blossoms were just starting to bloom at the end of February, so I took so...