trundling around japan

Being in Japan is a little like the unwritten rules in baseball, unless you are in baseball or follow it pretty closely , you don't know the rules. I actually bought a book about Japan that had some stuff that even Erica didn't know about. ( red lanterns outside a doorway means neighborhood pub, blowing your nose in public is frowned upon...but all those other disgusting noises they make are OK?) It is cherry blossom time in Sasebo, just beautiful, not sure why we don't plant like millions of these trees everywhere.We took a little field trip to Nagasaki and Kumamoto. I'm jumping around here, but hey , back to being in Japan...  everything is small, except the money (1000 yen = $12 around there) so the cars are small , the roads are skinny, the doorways are short, it sort feels like your in legoland...in an ashtray, cause everybody smokes. Everything is really clean,on time ( which is helpful to try and figure out which train or bus your supposed to take ) and polite. Japanese people are not the friendliest people around, unless they're drunk, then pretty friendly until fall down time....so friendly for about a half an hour.
  Nagasaki atomic bomb museum ..is what you would imagine. The castle in Kumamoto is world class, just beautiful. It sort of seems like all japanese cities were designed by the same guy...shopping area here, call it ginza,restaurants next to the shopping area, big beautiful park in the middle some where and then plain bordering on ugly offices,apartments, hotels and then huge ostentatious pachinko bars that look like they are on fire, just all the cigarette smoke coming out of them. Almost everyone backs into parking spaces, do you think people that don't get tickets?
  Anyways we're back home now, all jet lag screwed up. Slept like 22 hours the 1st night and then 4 the next, UUGGGHHHH.

love and warm thoughts from home

carrie and glen

another bathroom story

I know I've already written a bathroom story for this trip, but we're in japan and unless you've been here, you won't really understand. OK let's start with most things are in Kanji, which are chinese characters, which means we have no idea what it means...and off we go!!!!!  Feeling an uncomfortable pressure in your reproductive area you decide to seek an appropriate place to relieve said PSI, and trundle onto to a bathroom in Japan. Upon entering you see plumbing and wiring in and out of the toilet that can be some what disturbing. There are also picture instructions that make sense mostly, but you really can't be positive. And what does stand by mean? So assuming your sitting ( you pretty much miss the show if you stand) as soon as flesh touches seat a whirring starts ( 2 things happen here;1- the seat starts to warm, 2- the water for the bidet starts to heat up ) So assuming you're not scared by this point your doing something...or not because your too scared. Anyways after said business you have options ( for me, this has been a trial and error process, lasting 3 or 4 days, with some lingering doubts) So you can go for the direct jet , of which some you can vary the pressure, lots of pressure can be somewhat uncomfortable, you know wrong direction and all.you can choose the light shower thing which I think is mostly for woman ( larger surface area ) and most important, none of this stops automatically ( so on the high pressure direct jet setting and you start to tear up a bit, calmly look fot the stop or power button)Also on some toilets the handles flush both ways, one way for liquids and the other for..well other ( I'm actually just guessing but it seems right ) and others the water to fill the bowl comes out the top so you can use it to wash your hands, although there never seems to be any towels to dry your hands.
  Japan is wonderful and weird and I have lots more I want to say about it in the next few day , including why WIFI was more available in the Phillipines than here

love and warm thoughts from sasebo japan

carrie erica and glen

things I never get tired off

It's sort of like, some of my favorite thinegs but without Julie Andrews, singing....OK it's not really like that, it's just stuff we've seen in developing countries that would drive OSHA, building inspectors, L&I people, pretty much anyone from a developed country would start shaking their head and mumbling....doing Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.
   Transportation is great!!...So 5 people on a scooter ( yes I said scooter!!!) at least 10 people on a tricycle, a palm tree on a pedicab or about 15 people in and around a small pickup truck and my favorite was outside of the big market at Masaya in Nicaragua at about 4 in the morning, a donkey is pulling a cart loaded about 12 ft high with plastic laundry baskets, plastic chairs and tables , going like 2 miles an hour done the highway. I assume they were taking all this stuff to the market that morning to sell....hanging off the back of the cart was the hazard light to warn on coming cars of a slow moving vehicle, or actually a small boy that looked around 5 years old waving a flashlight at on coming cars, the best, I laughed my ass off. Another good one is babies, yes small toddlers, on the handlebars of bicycles or various pets or food products ( still alive ) on bicycles or scooters, always a good picture.
  I almost always get asked if I want to buy some sort of drugs by various random people... drugs are a pretty big no no in the phillipines...but still, I did get asked by various random people on the street if I wanted to buy some Viagra. Not sure what that meant but going to go with, alive and male.
  Showers and electricity, or pretty much wiring anywhere in third world countries, always exciting. Just yell "Clear " before you plug in anything and remember to not touch the suicide shower while the water is running... again exciting and usually it breaks the heater which means no more hot showers, not exciting.
  Ok one last thing, diving related of course. We all agree ...nobody gets tired of seeing Nemo ( or I guess more accurately, clownfish or anemonefish ) so like I've said in previous posts , Nemos are territorial and pretty aggressive, so getting rushed by a 2 inch fish is pretty amusing, I also learned this trip that they see each other in your mask. So they also think another Nemo is coming to take their anenome from them, along with the 6 ft bumbling flesh bag that is getting close to them.
  I also never get tired of travelling, of meeting these wonderful people in their beautiful countries and my favorite of all...meeting their children, they are innocent and old all at once. Sad and wonderful....

Love and warm thoughts from Sasebo, Japan

Carrie, erica and glen

waiting

Hi all, let's see.... it's pouring rain, we've checked out of our room, the girls are playing bananagrams and of course I am writing this down . We are at the dive shop restaurant ( spent alot of time here ) waiting for our boat to come and pick us and take us back to the mainland and our waiting van, for the 3 hr trip back to Cebu airport for our flight at 130am to fukuoka, japan.So we have about 3 hrs to kill, hopefully the rain stops, cause the boat in the rain could be a little uncomfortable.
  Yesterday, our last day diving, and erica's birthday, we did the shark dive, the best one yet!! lots of sharks all around us.For the 2nd morning dive, we dove a seamount, pygmy seahorses and ....a blue ring octopus, which I find out later are quite poisonous. The last dive is a shallow dive just mucking around the bottom looking for stuff. Found lots, pipefish, stonefish, cuttlefish and seamoths ( they must be mating because they are travelling around in pairs )A really good last dive here.
  Then back here last night for dinner and swap war stories about divers with some of the staff here. Some of my best stories. It's been fun here, we weren't able to see as much as we would have liked to, which is usually the case when we travel and we really didn't get to experience as much of phillipine culture as we would have liked. But we can always plan to come back. Next stop japan and the home of my ancestors, should be interesting, will keep you updated.

love and warm thoughts from malapasqua

carrie, erica and glen

something in the water

We're in the water the other day, diving Gato island. There's a few boats around with other divers, like almost all the places we visit when we are diving, the head is pretty much just a hole in the floorboards to the ocean. ( are you getting the fore shadowing here? ) So we are coming up from the dive and I notice stuff floating down from the surface. We are underneath another dive boat and well the light goes off in my head!!!, I look once more at what looks like toilet paper and !!!!??????? I'm swimming in #$%&, everybody out of my #$&*% way now! Everybody is looking at me like I'm rude, but obviously nobody realizes what is going on, don't care I'm looking for clean water. That will be our bathroom story for this trip.

Love and warm thoughts from malapasqua

carrie, erica and glen