I'm skipping way ahead here, but this is the train we came back on.

One of the primary buildings of the Shrine, certainly the most impressive looking.

This is the Kitsune on the other side. I has two kids and a fish in its mouth. At least I think it's a fish.

This is a closer view of one of the two guardian kitsune.

The entrance to the Yutoku Inari Shrine. Notice the big fox.

More of the recreated Holland.

This is the other side of Huis Ten Bosch, the dark, seedy side.

This is Huis Ten Bosch from our room. That's the ocean out there.

This is the Hotel we stayed at.

Sasebo Matsuri Dancers. There were quite a few schools there competing. So in the middle of a mock Holland, we have semi-traditional matsuri dancing.

Okay, so we are back from Fukuoka and a brief whirlwind tour of Northern Kyushu and parts of Holland. Huis Ten Bosch was; and boy was it ever. Still, the evening spent there was a great break from the numbing normality and stress over the past couple of weeks. We got to eat washoku and talk with some of my parents friends, and over the days we got to spend with them, they became more mutual friends. On our way back we stopped by the Yutoku Inari Shrine. I don't know how to describe the mental and emotional differences between the two places. Certainly we found both to be both fun, but for different reasons. I'll just post some pictures, it'll make it easier on all of us.

Thoughts

Wife here. Long time since anything has been posted. So I will take this brief amount of time to complain about hair. Yes, I could say, inform our casual readers about recent events, or something equally interesting, but because Precious is sleeping and unable to listen we, meaning I, will whine about hair.

It's the time again. Time to cut this mess. I had to chop it off pretty short back in the summer because of a mishap involving bleach, henna, and about five consecutive dyeings in the course of a three week period. Not one of my most stellar achievements. But now, with sun and time, the brown color at the ends of my hair has all my students exclaiming, "Did you dye it?"... "NO!" I am wont to respond with wrath--"It's been like this since before SUMMER VACATION!" Regardless, the lightening of the ends (and that funny strawlike feeling they have from the dye months ago) and the taily thing licking against my neck... IYAYA!!! It's time to get it cut.

However, I feel off on my lonesome. I love hairstyles. It has to be some form of weakness, but I ogle all the pretty haircut magazines, and thumb past pages and pages... of cute Japanese girls and their super-straight hair. I tried the straightperm thing. It didn't work. The wavycurlyBAKABAKABAKA-ness of my hair had a ripple in the perm DAYS after the five hour procedure had finished. But you know what? Nobody expects people with wavy or curly hair to cut it short. I think I would make a great flapper, the ring curls would take excellently. Oops. Eighty years too late.

It is worth noting here that my husband, the vampire, thinks that my hair is fine however. It is worth noting that it was he who cautioned against the initial dyeing debacle. It is also worth pointing out that he particularly likes my hair when I just get out of bed and it sticks on end so he can fluff it into further states of frenzy.

I keep on telling myself that I want my hair long again, but when I start having that ONE big curl at the nape of my neck that I have to twirl, and the mess is two-tone, and it begins to do stupid things, I begin to get itchy to chop it all off. But at the moment I am thinking the husband's hair clippers under the bathroom sink will make my my life easier. Stylistically, I suppose, having long hair would be cool. REALLY long, like, ANIME long. Then maybe the curlwave would be all long and romanticky. Unfortunately, I think my hair's only superpower is being annoying, though, so it probably wouldn't even do that.

I have thought often enough that my hair is a kind of divine mandate gift/curse that I shall never control, despite my best efforts, to remind me of the wild, untamable soul that roars within me, to chastise me against the dangers of desiring physical perfection, and to humble me, especially in humid weather, against the sin of pride.

Yeah, that's it.