4/8 - A Day Away From 22

It's been a while since the last post. During that while, I've been mostly sitting around, enjoying not doing much of anything, including writing blog posts. It's occurred to me though that many may have assumed at this point that the Blog is Dead, because, after all, the trip is over. I'm still in Asia, but now it's Northeast, and not so much of an adventure, really. Then again, Japan is always an adventure, just not usually the test-of-will kind that one encounters down South. For instance, at Mos Burger today, we picked up a "Mos Menu Book", the cover of which lists, with no reference to what it might be listing, the following:

Beef
Vegetable
Buns
Salt
Beef Menu
Pork Menu
Seafood & Vegetable Menu
Chicken Menu
Mos no Natsumi
Nutrition
Allergy

They make some high-class burgers though. And it is allergy season, so, fair enough, I guess.

A fierce wind is blowing across the land today. My father appropriately commented this morning that it feels like we're under siege. If you close your eyes you can imagine the cannonballs flying. It's really one of the strongest winds I've ever encountered, in fact. Out at the shopping center, older Japanese men and women walk between the food store and Homac, the all-purpose store, wearing white masks over their nose and mouth. The Postal Service ATM, one of the few that will take an American card here, and which is nowhere near a post office, announces upon our entry, "Welcome to the Post Office!" At Uniqlo, the cheap yet high-fashion clothing store, the dressing room attendant requires that women wear a face-covering scarf, or kaburimono, when trying on items that must be pulled over the head.

The Future of the Blog is in question, and in fact, if it's to continue beyond the trip in some similar form, it will certainly require a name change. I think I'd like to keep posting here, maybe making a weekly routine of it, or something like that. I do enjoy getting to write things here and then have them available for others to read. Actually, I'd be interested to know, especially from all you non-commenting lurkers (yes, that's what I'm calling you now, but I say it with affection of course) whether you'd want to keep reading even if I couldn't promise you tales of daring escapes from Thai prisons (which didn't happen, but, well....) It would become a blog covering both the mundane (as in, non-travelling life) as well the less mundane (as in, when I go somewhere, etc.) In fact, what I'd really like to do is take this and make it part of a larger website, better designed and highly customized, featuring all sorts of great things. But that's a longer term thing.

Right now, mostly what I'm working on is trying to decide where to live and what to do. A minor task, really, if I could just reach a decision. I leave here on the 29th, and then, it could turn out a number of ways. I'll keep any developments posted here, of course.