...or, escape of the yataibune ... (182/365, 1 Jul 2022)
If it's Friday...it must be Friday. An other early start to the day. With the early class done, it was time to prepare for a long-awaited in-person welcome to the new exchange students, some of whom had waited two years to have their in-country experience.
It was an interesting experience as I realised just as I began my welcome speech to them that this was indeed the first time in a while we had all be in the same room, welcoming students, something we had taken for granted when we did these events three or four times a year, pre-Covid. The students seemed pleased to be here as well.
And once that was done, I was tidying up a few things, thinking about heading out to take a walk and a few pics (with a big weekend of work ahead I really planned to leave the office a bit earlier (narrator: that didn't happen)), when I noticed the port suddenly come to life...the yataibune, or river boats (mostly working in the floating restaurant style) appeared to be heading out, in my imagination, for a bit of an excursion. I usually see one to two floating around on this part of the port, and occasionally at night with all their lights on, but I've not seen them en masse like this before.
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| And here I was thinking it was a calm start to the day |
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| The Grande Flotilla |
I think I would have liked to have been out there with them. I stayed for a while in the hope they'd make a return trip with their lights on...but that didn't happen.
Taken with the Canon EOS M5, 18-150mm lens.
