Kyoto Dispatch #1

June 16, 2026

I am writing this from a ryokan in Kyoto. There is a paper screen between me and a garden that someone has been raking into a spiral for what I suspect is several centuries. The hotel internet is fine — which in the hospitality industry means "aggressively usable but spiritually unsatisfying."

Mrs Froggy is asleep. She earned it. She navigated us through seventeen temples today without a single GPS drop-out, negotiated two kimono rentals entirely in Japanese, and successfully prevented me from asking a shrine maiden whether she used waterfall or agile project management to organise the omikuji dispensation process.

I nearly did, though. The temptation was real. But I am on holiday. I am recovering. I sat on a cushion and drank matcha and watched maple leaves not fall (because it is June) and I did not once think about Jira.

That last sentence is a lie. I thought about Jira once. For approximately four seconds. Then I ate a sweet bean bun and the feeling passed.

Observations from the first 48 hours:

Kyoto is the opposite of a standup — nobody asks what you did yesterday, nobody blocks you, and the only deliverable is whether you have had a good time.
A zen garden is specification documentation that took two hundred years to write. This is why I prefer garden rakes to Scrum masters.
Mrs Froggy's conference-surviving instincts (pack light, carry snacks, know where the exit is) translate flawlessly to international travel. She is a Delivery Manager even at rest. It is frankly intimidating.
Matcha soft serve is a genuine engineering achievement. Creamy, bitter, sweet, cold. No dependencies. No breaking changes. It just works. More software should aspire to be matcha soft serve.

The servers are patrolling themselves. The site is up. The visitor counter is incrementing. I checked once. Once.

Resuming normal operations 25 June.

Ribbit from Kyoto,

Froggy
CEO, Rib IT Ltd
Currently: horizontal, on a tatami mat, listening to a bamboo water feature