I would have had this up earlier today, but first there was a power outage that took up forty minutes of our time and then I went out to a three-hour-long dinner. Add in some other things I was doing, and there was a short delay. But it's still the first, so it's still a retrospective on the New Year ( Read more... )

This week softlykarou and I received our shipment of mirin, the sweet cooking sake that we use to make some meat and all the だし巻き (dashimaki, "dashi-flavored fried eggs"). It took us months to use up the last two bottles and this time in a fit of exuberance, I ordered five, which will probably take us years to use. Fortunately, since it's mildly alcoholic, it ( Read more... )

Some of these will be pretty similar to softlykarou's list, but you know, we're married. It kind of makes sense.

In no particular order:

• Family Vacations!: We took two trips last year that I've been wanting to take for a while-- one to Oregon, where I've spent over a year of my life when you count all the summer trips I took as a child, and to Philadelphia, ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

Let's talk about the last year!

I guess the biggest change from the perspective of this blog is that I started actually posting here again. I got inspired by RPGs--as is often the case, I admit--and started my Dungeons & Design series, and I think it was mostly the fact of posting those that got me into the habit of posting about other subjects. ( Read more... )

A bit different this year.

( Wassail, wassail... )

softlykarou and I had a few people[1] over for New Years, avoiding our error in previous years by not traveling anywhere. Well, other than to one of the local shrines. I asked Kaminaka-san if he knew of any place doing anything for 初詣 (hatsumōde, the first shrine visit for the new year), and he told us a couple. One of them, the one in Mibu (the same place ( Read more... )

Happy New Year, everyone.

Happy New Year everyone!

(I would be at a party, but softlykarou has to work tomorrow and I didn't want to abandon her)

A good year in review, I think.

Obviously, the thing that shaped 2007 for me the most was getting married to softlykarou, though not getting into JET came second (this year!) otherwise I'd be posting this from Japan right now. I've let my Japanese ( Read more... )

( lyrics )