Katie's green thumb, among other things

Yesterday, Katie and I decided to transform our backyard into something that's not such an utter abomination. The first step in this epic struggle will be to get a decent vegetable garden going. We bought a few different varieties of tomatoes (roma and plum), red and yellow bell peppers, basil, and mint. We figured we'd get the most use out of those guys, even if others, such as zucchini or eggplant, might be easier to grow. We spent a few hours yesterday pulling up grass and weeds and turning up soil, and Katie's going to head to the home center today to buy bricks for making a raised garden so we can transfer the seedlings this afternoon. It's a grand experiment. I'll keep you posted on its progress.

Recently, I decided not to be such a shameless slacker and started taking actual Japanese lessons. I'm taking a couple, actually. Twice a week I do a program more focused on grammar, reading, and writing, and once a week I have conversation. Ok, technically the last one isn't exclusively a conversation class, but I'm going to call it one anyway because I'm talking to a living human being instead of working out of a workbook. In my spare time, I've also been making a more concerted effort to cram as many kanji into my head as possible. I'm not worrying so much right now about how to pronounce them, just learn what they mean. For example, I don't necessarily know that this character 起 can be read as "o" or "ki", but I do know that it means "get up". Once I learn the vocabulary "okiru" 起きる (to get up) or "kiritsu suru" 起立する (to stand up) I'll be able to remember the readings in context.

At the end of the month, Katie and I are going to Korea to visit our friend, Adam. We'll be taking the night bus to Fukuoka, and from there we'll take the high speed hydrofoil across the Sea of Japan and disembarking in Busan. I'm not exactly sure what the itinerary will be, but we'll head up to Seoul for at least a day or two, where we plan on taking part in the DMZ tour. Apparently, the USO runs a tour of the demilitarized zone, the strip of land that separates North and South Korea at the 38th parallel. It should be a hoot.

As for the summer, Australia is out of the question (we'll go sometime when prices aren't so ridiculous), so now we're looking at some more domestic tourism. And for that, we're looking north to the barren (by Japanese standards), snow-capped and wildflower-covered island of Hokkaido. It'll be nice to escape the oppressive heat and humidity that sits on the Kansai Region during mid-August. I'm especially interested in going to Hokkaido as it's one of the last vestiges of Ainu culture and civilization - the Ainu being the aboriginal people of the Japanese archipelago, sort of like the Native Americans back home. They're ethnically Caucasian, looking far more Siberian than East Asian, and are, among other things, the hairiest people in East Asia. Today, there are only a few hundred who can claim pure Ainu parentage, unmixed with the Yamato people we now know as the Japanese who drove them northward so long ago.

I've posted a backlog of pictures on the picasa web site. You can access them via this link: http://picasaweb.google.com/rmhollands . Please enjoy!

-Bob