allow me to carry on...

So...its about 3:30 on a gloomy Monday afternoon. The wind is horking all over my trusty little home and my 3:00 student didn't show up. No call... No, "hey Mr. Nemo, it doesn't look like I can make it today." No courtesy, no respect. Where's the love??!!
It occurs to me that perhaps my student was too afraid to call me, and tell me that she couldn't make it. Maybe she was nervous. Worried that I'd say,
"If you don't come to your english lesson, I'm going to track you down, put you in a half-nelson and give you a noogie you're not soon to forget..."
It's just possible that my student has not called me for this reason...she is 29.

Things are much different now that I'm a private 1-on-1 teacher...not the way it was back in the days of being an Assistant Language Teacher at a junior high school...the way it was when my parents visited me two years ago...

...That should serve as segue into the continuation of my parents' visit to the land of the rising sun...
I believe that I left off in Nara, the ancient capital of Japan. Nara is a great place to visit because of the deer.

the what?!

Yes, it seems that hundreds and hundreds of years of history (including horyu-temple, the oldest surviving wooden building in the world) just wasn't enough. But fortunately someone was bright enough to introduce a fleet (much larger than a flock) of actual, living deer to roam and terrorize the innocent tourists of the city.
...yes, that tall white guy is me (at left)...bearing down on my unsuspecting nemesis deer. To this day I haven't been able to prove that it was the one that bit my ass, but there was no mistaking its I'm-more-holy-than-you-bacause-I-live-in-the-shadow-of-Todai-Temple attitude. That, and the white spots.

The omnipresence of the deer is astounding. I found this one napping outside my parents window at the hotel. Look at it laying around and generally being useless. Probably waiting for me to go out and buy it some 100 yen wafers from the deer-wafer stand. Nice try buddy.

GET A JOB!!