Kyoto. Well. The cherry blossoms are fantastically gorgeous. I'm glad to have been here. But. It's kind of hard to love. I don't know why - we've had some great times. We are so fortunate to have been here at the peak cherry blossom viewing time. And we got to go to the imperial palace today - it's open to the public 8 days a year. But it's flat, the architecture is boring, good food is hard to find (and the mediocre food is much more expensive), it's hard to ge...

Happy, proud kids, yet so sad that it is all over. They have had soooo much fun, made new friends, been encouraged to do their very best. It has been awesome.

Lots of violin players...! Just had an announcement: "if you are taking photos, please sit down, as standing up and taking photos is very dangerous"!!

We made it to Matsumoto! It is fun being part of what feels like a huge festival. The town has really been taken over by the conference - street banners, shops welcoming us, volunteers on every corner waiting to escort us to wherever we need to go. Amazing! The city put on a great welcoming party at the Matsumoto castle. Was a lovely chance to see some different aspects of Japanese culture, and check out the 400 year old castle. Exhausted now - off to sleep aft...

Yay - she got it! Went from "I don't like skiing" this morning, to flying faster than me down green, and even a bit of intermediate terrain.... She was unstoppable once she got it. So lovely to see the kids skiing together. Toby got parallel turns, and Lucy had a great day too. Andrew took the older two (and me!) down an incredibly hard, icy, "mogul-ly" run. They coped very well, and Toby has created a new word for his technique for getting down: "bum-ploughin...