二ヶ月前、暑くなり始めた時一日冷奴をとても食べたかった。その日豆腐を食べなかったけれど，次の日本屋に行ってぐうぜん豆腐料理の本に気がつきました。「そうか。宿命だ」と思いました。それでえんりょしないで本を買いました。
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It’s been a while since I posted some pictures, so here’s an eyeful from my trip to Mie.

Here’s a roadside stop on the way to our hotel in Mie. You can get a bit of an idea of the fog from these photos, but we could actually see pretty well here. In the rightmost picture Kate is on the left and Yuji’s keeping balance on the right. Mariko turned out to be the photographer for the trip, so you’re stuck looking at my mug in most of these. Apologies.
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Looking out from the ferry, the fog was so thick that I couldn’t see much of anything. The morning had been rainy, but by about noon the rain had stopped and only a cool, dense mist remained. The ferry motored steadily through the narrow ocean bottleneck where the Aichi peninsula reaches out toward Mie prefecture. This particular region of Japan is currently entering the typhoon season, so the weather has been a little hostile lately. The sea was choppy and Mariko didn’t exactly have a strong set of sea legs. Kate and Yuji were leaning over the ships railing, trying to catch glimpses of the scattered, unpopulated islands we passed from time to time. The ordinarily green peaks and cliffs were reduced to shy, elusive gray shadows in the distance. I just sat on one of the benches bolted to the ship’s deck and enjoyed the cool ocean air. It was a refreshing contrast to the blistering heat and humidity Shizuoka’s experienced lately.
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