My family is arriving in Japan tomorrow evening. I'm quite excited and a little nervous about herding them around everywhere. It looks like some of my friends here will help me out, however. The sister city groups here are quite excited about my family coming and want to give them tours and presents, etc. I think it's going to be a little crazy.

My aunt and cousin are supposed to arrive tonight in Tokyo. I think they might try to call me if they're not too tired. Perhaps not. I don't have any information about their hotels, so I don't really know what they're doing. It would be interesting to hear from them and have them be in Japan, albeit far away. They were going to go to China first, but changed that part of the trip because of the SARS epidemic. Luckily, it seems like SARS may be disappearing. It's interesting to think that we have enough communication to be able to successfully contain and eradicate a new disease. That got me thinking about why we couldn't stop HIV. I suppose it took them awhile to realize what it was. I think it also takes about 6 months before you start showing symptoms or even positive test results. If SARS took longer to show up in people, we might not have realized about it until too late.

It's been raining recently, and I am afraid that it may continue to rain. I hope that it doesn't rain too much when my family is here. I want to take them to Mt. Tate or Shomyo Falls, which are both outdoor places for sightseeing. Plus, touring any city pretty much requires you to be outdoors. Today it only rained briefly then stopped. That would be okay, too.