October odds and ends

On Sunday, October 21st we attempted to visit the Aida Mitsuo Museum. Mitsuo was a famous calligrapher and poet/philosopher. We attempted and weren't very successful at this excursion. The museum had a very library-like feel that was in strong contrast to Addison's excited-running-around-yelling mood. I recommend viewing a few of Mitsuo's pieces here. The museum is located in the Tokyo International Forum building, which is where the next set of photos come from. This modern structure was designed to resemble a boat.



We've lived in our apartment a total of 19 months. In that time the grass in our small backyard/garden has never been cut. Short of taking a pair of scissors to it, we don't have any means to cut it ourselves. The bugs love this. The opportunity came for us to have the grass cut by a professional service. The building management company arranged for them to come. All we had to do was pay $52.50. Good thing we only have to pay that once every 19 months! That's a lot of money for our itty-bitty yard! As with all other "trimmings" I've seen in Japan, it will take a long time for our grass to recover.

Before

After
And to wrap up this mish-mosh, I'll leave you with the story of my stove/cook-top. Almost all Japanese homes are equipped with a gas cook-top that has three burners and a fish broiler. The burners are three sizes - small, medium and large. Around the third week of October the medium burner on my stove stopped lighting. I was certain we'd have to have the gas company come in to fix it. Ian contacted his liaison at work to have the stove checked. To Ian's surprise, the man wrote back and told Ian to try changing the batteries first. ???????? Batteries???????? Yes. Yes, indeed, my gas stove needs two D-size batteries to ignite the gas. Once I replaced the batteries, the burners were fine. In fact, better than they've been since we moved in.