Hi!
I found your blog a while ago while randomly searching the web, and I have to say that i've enjoyed reading about your life in Japan and looking at all of your beautiful pictures. Next fall I hope to be accepted into Kansai Gaidai University for the fall semester as an exchange student. Kansi Gaidai is about half way between Kyoto and Osaka I belive and is also a collge town. Your blog is encouraging and all your pictures make me look forward to this trip more and more :)

A lot of foreigners living in Kansai started at Gaidai. Good luck. I used to live across the river from Hirakata in Takatsuki. What ever happened to Bob's Bar at Kuzuha?

aw, your site was so pretty! why are you redesigning it? i liked the sparse elegance of it.

The new design looks excellent! ii desu yo. I have no clue if that phrase works there... Anyhow, the headers with the gradients are a nice touch. Are they just made from pure CSS? If so, I've never seen that done before.

I'm redesigning it because it looked the same for over a year, and because there were some mistakes in the layout (I hid them with manual offsets) which would break the site once I add the moblog sidebar. The gradients are a small JPG, but the layout is CSS. There is still some work to do. I think I'm going to make the bars full-width and run the boxes as content capsules, if you know what I mean. I probably won't like the way it looks, and change it again, though.

It's not a very nice thing to do, but I'm designing this site for Macs basically. The default is skia font, which is stupid, I know, but I've always wanted to try it. Windows will get a plain vanilla version, unless you download skia. Question: Does windos xp anti-alias screen fonts?

No, XP doesn't anti-alias sadly.

I really liked your old design better. Much friendlier and welcoming. But of course, I will continue to visit your site to steal your wonderful pictures. Thank you.

wow, brushed metal in Kyoto - very futuristic, which may be why some said they preferred the old design.
It will take a bit of getting used to, but I like change, generally.

My friend Bob I went to high school with (that the bar was named after in Kuzuha) is also VERY interested in what ever became of the bar. No. REALLY! He is passing thru on his way to Asheville North Carolina. If you find out LET ME KNOW SO I CAN PASS IT ON!

Thanks!

Where can I download Skia? Everywhere seems to only say it comes with a version of Mac OS. I have had someone ask me to do something with this particular font, but I'm using a PC. Know where I can get a copy of it? Please email me.

You don't need Skia here anymore, because I'm not using it. Nathan Duckworth uses lots of lovely Skia on his site, Mikan Moblog. Skia was commissioned by Apple. Now the site uses American Typewriter (download here).

Windows XP does anti-alias screen fonts if ClearType is enabled in the Appearance Control Panel. Desktop Windows computers do not have this feature enabled by default. And most people don't even know it exists or know where to find it or tune it.