Busy week this week and I haven't begun to organize for our move yet. I'm still working on getting Ginger squared away for entry into the UK. It's frustrating, because we keep getting conflicting reports on the quarantine requirements. Finally, I decided to call the UK govt. agency in charge of the Pets Travel Scheme (PETS) and got the straight dope from them. One of the cargo companies in Tokyo insisted that Ginger would have to be quarantined at Heathrow airport, but I found out that just isn't so. We will be able to have him transferred to one of the quarantine facilities near where we'll be living in Yorkshire. So now we're trying to determine which of those three facilities we will place him. Tough decision to make from so far away. We're trying to see if we can find someone to go and inspect the facilities for us.

So, what else this week? I went to a kabuki program at kabuki-za on Tuesday. What a terrific experience. I've been trying to talk Brad into going ever since we got here and I finally realized I wasn't gonna be able to talk him into it so I just went by myself. The entire experience was quite a treat. For a Tuesday night the theatre was very crowded. I got caught in the mob as the doors opened and couldn't figure out why everyone was cramming their way in, since we all had reserved seats. Perhaps it was so they could be first in line to sign up for a reserved meal. I saw the counter for that, so I figured I better sign up. The show began at 4:30 p.m. with a 30-minute intermission at 6 p.m. Not much time to grab a bite to eat at one of the restaurants on the third floor. There were acts from three different plays performed -- a typical format for Kabuki. Most kabuki plays are quite lengthy and are not usually performed in their entirety. The performances I saw were fabulous -- the costumes were incredible. And the acting, well it's so foreign to western theatre, but I quite enjoyed it.

My other great acheivement this week is I went back to Nishiogi to purchase an item we had spied there the previous weekend. It was a box full of woodblock prints. Brad and I leafed through them but couldn't make up our minds whether to buy them or not. The asking price was ¥45,000. We even considered splitting the contents of the box with Heather and Graham, but eventually walked a way from them. Well, Brad and I had a good think about them and then decided to go and negotiate for them. I went by myself during the week and after much wandering around located the shop again. I offered 30,000. The shop owner countered with 38,000. Then I suggested 35,000 and he said yes! I was delighted. The more i looked over the prints in the box, the more I realized what a treat we had found. We've done a bit of research now and have discovered that the prints constitute the entire series titled "The Fifty-three Stages of the Tokaido" by Hiroshige. We have no idea how old these prints are or whether they are reproductions or not. But we are very satisfied with the quality and are simply delighted with our purchase. I knew I wanted to bring home a wood block print or two with me, but I never dreamed we come away with an entire box of them! There are actually 60 prints in all, because some of the prints are alternate views of the same location.