Wow, I cannot believe a year has passed already. Things here have been rocking on nicely. I have been assigned a new and interesting opportunity at work that is throwing daily challenges to me. Seems everywhere I look a new challenge waits, so that is interesting. Today we are heading up the coast to go rice planting at Kei's parents farm as we now have Japanese Golden Week... more like a Golden Weekend this year, but it is was it is.

The winter is now gone, we are up to 20 degree and all the flowers are coming out in the yard. We have so many flowers that you can smell them just walking around... GREAT! I also started this year's garden: Cucumber, Tomatoes (5 different types), Paprika, Basil, Mint, Green Pepper, Egg Plant, etc... yummy

I'll try to update again shortly...

I was scheduled to fly home from Zurich leaving Friday night and landing Saturday night. However the flight from Zurich to Frankfurt was delayed 45 minutes which was just long enough to miss the connecting flight to Narita. This spelt doom and a nightmare transit of 24 hours as JAL only flew once a day. Luckily they were able to secure us a hotel actually at the airport. Still, it was a long wait and something that I sincerely hope I do not have to endure again. I suppose that with the amount of traveling I have done in the past years the laws of probability were not looking favorably on me. Anyway, we finally boarded and thought nothing else could possible go wrong... talk about tempting fate!!! When we arrived in Narita we found the Narita to Komatsu flight had been cancelled so we took a 1.5 hour bus to Haneda Airport. Unfortunately, the ANA computer system had been down all day and they had cancelled something like 160+ flights and another 170+ were delayed... including the last flight for the day which was ours... delayed two hours. At this stage two hours seemed like chump change compared to what we had already been through... I eventually walked in my door on Sunday night at 11:00.... Then was up at 7:30 and into work by 9:00... nutts! ... or Character building... whichever way you want to look at it. At least I now have another wacky adventure to chalk up and bring to light over beers some day...