It’s been raining on and off since we’ve arrived in Kumamoto and I’m not talking about showers. When it rains here, it pours. It’s the kind that can drench you in second if you’re caught without an umbrella.

In this weather, the minutes of dryness become precious.

We spent the morning at Suizenji – a park-slash-park about 20 minutes away by bus despite being only around 3 KM away. One thing I’ve noticed, it takes about twice as long to get place to place here than it does in the U.S.

Even though there wasn’t much to see other than bare branches, it gave me inspiration for my own garden. It also, unfortunately, brought my own garden to the forefront of my mind. I haven’t checked on my seedlings on over a week, I hope they are okay.

Since there wasn’t many places to be in Kumamoto, we decided to go to Kumamoto station, which is also a mall. My initial thought was to visit the Bic Camera store there to shop a new camera to replace the mirror-less camera with a moldy sensor but I ended up spending the majority of the afternoon at a book shop shopping for books to advance my Japanese language learning.