The Year of the Dragon, Day Two

The Year of the Dragon is off to a rather inauspicious start. The camera has not yet surfaced. What? Me worry? Not until I work my way through a backlog of pictures I've been meaning to share. Surely the camera is somewhere under all the Christmas debris that I fully intend to tackle once we get back from escorting College Boy to the airport tomorrow.  Or maybe I left it at the Indian restaurant in Hayama last week in which case it won't take a lot of arm-twisting to convince the Ancient Mariner to make a return visit.

While I can't speak for College Boy (more's the pity), I imagine he'll be feeling terribly sad when he boards that airplane and leaves Japan for what could very well be the last time.  We will have moved back to the States by the time his school year ends.  When will he see his girlfriend again?  This is definitely the downside of living overseas during high school.  "You can never go home again" takes on a whole new meaning.

Now for some pictures.  I snapped these in early December when we went to the Ikebana International Holiday Bazaar in Tokyo.  The first is one of those rare arrangements to earn an "I could do that!" response from me.  The fences bordering two sides of our Norfolk house are covered with vines that I am forever hacking into shape.  Sticking the debris in a vase would probably be a lot easier than wrestling it into a lawn and garden bag. 

We saw this sign over the restroom door in a subway station near Shiba Park. It cracked me up. Go figure.