We’re home! Fairly empty flight from Tokyo today. Back to winter… 🥶

Updated to add: I’m very happy to report that I had no difficulty getting back into Australia with my recovered passport! 😅

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A short but memorable day in Kyoto, the cultural capital of Japan! We visited the Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine and walked through some of the hundreds of beautiful gates. Then we headed to the Imperial Palace to see where the emperor used to live. Lastly we trekked out to the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, where we hiked through a forest of towering bamboo to a river gorge overlook. Beautiful way to end this trip. Time to go home! ⛩️🦊🎋

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How odd. I appear to be the only person in the #AWSDevDay speaker prep room who is knitting while they review their slides. 🤔🧶

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Such a professional. 😂 #gurning

(Thank you to my colleague Atsushi for immortalising this moment.)

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Dad – Relevant to your interests…

• https://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/2023/06/oregon-lawmakers-vote-to-allow-self-serve-gas-statewide-ending-decades-long-ban.html

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This is hilarious. As part of the ongoing protests at Reddit, the fashion advice subreddits have gone fully historical. Someone posted this, and the replies are truly amazing and I loved it SO MUCH. You will too. 😂

• https://www.reddit.com/r/femalefashionadvice/comments/14fe08z/how_to_dress_for_a_dinner_party_with_the_guy_i/

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ASIAN FIIIIIIIIIIT! 😎 My amazing husband tracked down replacement sunnies for me in Tokyo today, and they were actually cheaper than my original pair that was stolen, and he even got me a new Moomin case to put them in. ❤️

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Truly excellent ramen, 5 minutes from the hotel! 🍜 🙇‍♀️

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BULLET TRAIN! Mr. Snook finally gets to ride the Shinkansen as we head off on a long day trip to Kyoto. We picked seats with a view of Mt. Fuji, but unfortunately it’s a bit too hazy. I’m taking advantage of the time to work on my sweater some more… 🚅🗻🧶

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Me: So Japan is roughly the size of the east coast of Australia, much more densely packed, with mountainous terrain and earthquakes and stuff…
Rodd: Yep.
Me: So why do they have these super fast trains and we don’t?
Rodd: Australians are tight-arses.

(Okay, he also pointed out that the larger population means they can run the trains here frequently and thus more economically, but damn. I’d much rather spend 5hrs on a bullet train to Melbourne than fly.)

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