Bad blogger's updates

I've been horrible about updating this thing. The perfectionist in me doesn't let me just blurb something in a few minutes while at work, but in evenings I've been keeping busy without enough time to write a thoughtful post. So here's a quick, non-perfect summary of what's been happening:

- Mitya arrived on Sunday; a day late but without a fault of his own. Either CA fires or United Airlines airplanes or one or more gods/goddesses are to blame. I won't worry about finding the guilty one; I'll enjoy the time he's here.

- The rainy season ended and the hot season began. Just like that. I'm now wishing for the rainy season to be back, since the air is so humid, it feels like it's raining anyway. Plus the 35 degree heat. (yes, I went back to thinking in terms of the metric system, which feels surprisingly comfortable and comforting).

- We are heading to Kyoto this weekend (Monday is a holiday, giving us more time to explore this city that everyone recommends). I don't know what to expect, but I'm excited about riding the Shinkansen (bullet-train) there: 513.6 km in 2 hr 18 mi, which comes out to the average speed of 233 km/hr (145 mi per hour for you non-metric people). Not quite the speed of bullets (about 1000 km/hr according to the internet which never lies), but impressive nevertheless. I love trains but never get to ride them in the US, so I'm actually quite happy about the train travel and sad that it'll only be 2.3 hours (exactly; as is every time-related thing in Japan).

- Today marks the 1-month anniversary of my stay in Japan. I don't know if I'm proceeding through the culture shock stages (excitement, withdrawal, adjustment, enthusiasm, in that order) in the correct order. I tend to feel a scrambled mix of all of the above every day, with slightly different proportions of each, depending on the day. If I were to leave Japan now, I'd feel as if it were too soon -- so much still to see, to do and to learn. I'm curious about how I will feel in another month; and in another months + 2 weeks, when I'm boarding the US-bound plane. Maybe I'll come up with a perfect recipe of these 4 ingredients by then.
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