twelve years old

In less than three weeks, my parents will be relocating with my twelve year old niece to the other side of the state.  After months of trying to sell their place here, they can finally start living in what was once my grandparents place.  I have no problem with this move and am happy to see the place being kept in the family.  One thing that has been on my mind in regards to the move is what my niece will think of this change.  When I was her age, I loved spending time there.  In my mind, there was so much freedom and things to do there, be it swimming or just exploring in the woods.  Staying outside was the only place to be and the days of summer went by incredibly fast.  Does a twelve year old girl think the same as a twelve year old boy?  Will she have as much fun there as I did years ago?  I suspect that the answer might be no, but I will have a more definite answer by next month.  

On Sunday night, the teams on the Amazing Race were in Osaka, Japan and I envied them.  I may not have visited that exact city when I was in Japan last year, but many of things that they experienced were familiar to me.  For example, both the vending machines and the taxicabs were things that I saw all of the time when I was there.  One might argue that those are things that can be found in any large city, but for me there were a unique part of the Japanese landscape that I cannot fully describe.

I started to watch what for me is a new anime series called FLCL.  It is unlike any anime series that I have seen in the past and I love it because of that fact.  Yes, there is a teenage boy protagonist with girl issues.  Yes, there are robots that are unlike anything in reality.  Yes, there are sequences where the characters eyes transform into spinning circles.  All of those elements firmly belong to the world of anime, but the mix seems stranger in this series.