Schaumburg, IL

One of the main differences I found between life in Japan and life in the USA is this: in Japan, you walk there, or you take the train; in the USA, you drive. I suppose if you live in a particularly rural area of Japan or a particularly convenient urban area of the USA, this is not always true, but it’s very true in my experience. While carrying my camera around the streets and rails of Japan, I found plenty of neat things to photograph. Now that I’m back here, though, it seems that half of the interesting things I see are out my car windows. I’m trying to make it a habit to keep my cammy at hand when driving, now. Hiroko and I came back to Chicago for Spring Break. Our friend Tomoko is moving to California, and needed a ride to O’Hare Airport. The day before she left, St. Patrick’s Day, actually, we went to Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg so that the girls could buy smelly bath things, and I could ogle the new PowerBooks and receive new rubbber feet for my own at the [Apple Store][1]. This weird license plate was photographed exiting that mall’s parking lot. On the way back, we took a wrong turn and ended up at Mitsuwa, the Japanese mall that we’d wanted to visit but didn’t know exactly how to get there. [1]: http://www.apple.com/retail