Made it to Narita - left Sunday morning got here Monday evening - 10 hours of flying time. Always lose a day coming this way.

Pretty much a world record getting through customs and then on the Narita Express - landed about 4:35 Monday afternoon here - went through Immigration, got baggage, did customs, went to the train tix counter bought tickets - on the 5:13 train. Whoot!

Can't believe that I made it back to Japan prior to doing all the pictures I took on the last trip. Got pretty close - just had to put up some of those 185 mph shots coming back to Tokyo from Kyoto. Should get to them while I'm in Japan this week ...

They don't celebrate Halloween in Japan so you guys will have to celebrate on my behalf. Give a few extra pieces of candy for me will ya?

OK, a four day mad dash to Japan and back - starting today.

Will the daylight savings time fallback tonight  help this time change? I don't think so... gotta sleep when you can...

Tipped off by dear Mrs. Hapke, I bought that Dremel pumpkin carving kit (along with too many accessories) earlier in the month.

I have to make a quick trip back to Japan starting tomorrow - so I'm going to miss the Halloween festivities in our neighborhood.

So I put together the carving kit and after some period of time of splattering minute particulates of pumpkin (why was I reminded of the dentist?), this is what resulted from my efforts:

If you said "apple" you'd be incorrect (I know, I know, I'm a Washington stater and I do love the apples) ...

Harriet Miers withdrew her SCOTUS nomination today, ostensibly to protect the integrity of the Executive branch.

I guess the president is compiling a list of people (outside of the Senate) that he must receive approval from prior to his next nomination - to insure that he doesn't offer up another mediocre candidate.

That's the sort of leadership that he's forced into now - because, you know, he works for us - does the leader of the free world.

"Come on Mr. President. Show some spine. Do what I say! Now!"

It's a touch of irony isn't it? Resign to support the independence of the Executive. In so doing, compromise the Executive's right to Constitutional process of advice and consent of the Senate, and like an activist judge, grant penumbral weight to advice and consent of the pundits.

Intent on retaining some of what I experienced at Kokedera, I created a panorama picture and then did a little 'art' work to tie the individual pictures together and to suggest something about the Kokedera experience..

If you click on the picture you will get a larger version of it in your browser - if you click on the bottom right corner a couple of times you'll get a 'full frame' rectangle - click in that for the picture to expand in your browser and you can scroll around in it to get a sense of being surrounded by this incredible place. This is Kokedera Koan:

In continuing to try to squeeze a little more life out of my laptop, I looked around the 'net recently to see if I could find something to take care of the scratches on my laptop lcd screen. The main issue with that has been a kind of a grid of scratches that were imprinted on the screen by the keyboard - very early in this laptop's life (I think it's a design issue - the keyboard shouldn't scratch the screen just because you close the laptop...)

Anyway, found a product by a company called Janvil. They sell a 'plastic restore system' that consists of a cleaner (seems rather like Armor All), and abrasive scratch removers (comes in light and heavy).

I tried it on my lcd - following their instructions - and it was terrific! Took the annoying little scratches out and the cleaner buffed it up very nicely and seems to have put a little bit of a protective coating on it.

Now, the biggest problem is seeing the dead pixels (looks like I've got about 8 of them) against brightly lit backgrounds.

Oh well, think I'm getting closer and closer to getting that new laptop ...

Since the laptop worked out so well - I did my cell phone screen too - worked really well - any kind of plastic surface without a built in coating seems to benefit...

Just thought I'd share.

Just because they asked me to go, didn't mean that I had to stop taking photos as I left...

I want to remember each part of this place...

Oh, I know I've been waxing up the Zen lately. Lest you think I've gone and embraced it as my new philosophical system, here's some good old Judeo-Christian meditation that works just fine...

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

I descended from the upper garden into the main temple complex - but I wasn't ready for this visit to be 'over'...