As you may have surmised from my Twitter feed, we have returned home. The trip was excellent–very relaxing, no trips to the emergency room, no brush-with-death experiences. We were, as always, sad to leave.
There was a taifun passing not far from Japan during our last days there. It was probably responsible for some amazing skies we saw from our hotel-room window, including a double rainbow over the Sky Tree on the last evening and a spectacular sunrise the next morning:
Speaking of the weather, on the way home we flew straight into the first winter-like storm of the season as we descended over the Rockies and hence encountered some rather awful turbulence. I very nearly tossed my proverbial cookies, but at least it woke me up for the following drive home from the airport.