First Month

The bonfire last night at the end of the Setsubun Festival also coincided with the end of our first full month in Kyoto:

As a family, we have had a lot of fascinating new experiences over the past 31 days, while also starting to settle into increasingly familiar routines of school, work, meals, etc. We are finding ourselves in an intriguing middle-ground between the short-term visitors to Kyoto and the city's long-term residents. On the one hand, we can navigate our way around the neighborhood now, and we are picking up various bits of local knowledge like which supermarket to go to for which kinds of product, when certain restaurants get crowded, which shops to avoid as 'tourist traps', and so on. On the other hand, our facility with the language is still rudimentary (although the girls are definitely on a rapidly upward learning curve), and we still get flummoxed by basic tasks like finding dishwasher detergent, or distinguishing one kind of tofu from another.

All told, we have really enjoyed our time in Kyoto thus far, and we are looking forward to the next 5 months here.