Oh, I couldn't find this pic a second ago. This is Alan w/ the lobster again.
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Aubrey enjoying an eclectic dinner of chips and salsa, Coke in a frosty mug, and lobster tail. It turned out pretty well, the lobster.
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Alan preparing to cook and eat a rock lobster that was given to us by a friend. Apparently, said lobster was caught in the ocean just off the coast of Kikai. It was big, spiny, and colorful. We've never cooked lobster before, so it was interesting and difficult. We decided to stick w/ eating the tail, steamed. Our Japanese friends recommended we eat it raw, but after looking at it, we just couldn't bring ourselves to do that. I know, we're just NUTS.
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Alan w/ his obnoxious USA T-shirt at sunset at Sugira Beach. He is smiling though his fingers were on the numb side.
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Aubrey next to her bike Frosty, after a late afternoon spent swimming at one of the best beaches on Kikai, Sugira Beach. It's almost sunset and we were a bit chilly since the wind was blowing and it was in the high 70s.
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Same beach, taken from the other side. This is Aubrey w/ the other American girl here (named Ariana) and her three kids. They are CUTE. And they are ENERGETIC. So they're a handful, but we have still offered to babysit.
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A wide-angle shot of one of the swimming beaches on Kikai. Note the huge coral fields. Most of it is really rough too - can damage your shoes.
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Aww, creap! This is my favorite brand of coffee creamer powder stuff. I like it b/c of its taste and also b/c of its name. Yes, I am allowed to like it for both reasons.
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This Shinto temple is very near our house, up the hill. You can tell it's Shinto and not Buddhist b/c 1) it's on Kikai (there are no Buddhist holy sites on Kikai); 2) it has that particular style of gate/arch, and 3) it is abandoned - nobody ever visits it except on New Year's Day.
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This is a Japanese cemetery, many of which dot the island. Strangely, they are often (like this one) near the elementary schools. Honestly, I think that's just weird. Obviously, most Japanese are cremated (thus the urns). After the typhoon, quite a few ceremonial gift urns were busted up near the grave marker where they had been placed beforehand.
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This is taken from the same place as the other picture. The buildings in the background are the post office and the Board of Education/City Hall building. It's a typically sunny day, and this is how I often dress on a normal day.
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This is one of the wild kitties that lives near our house. He's taking a drink in this pic. This one is the antsiest one and is always the first to run away from us, even if we walk slowly and softly.
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This is Aubrey checking the menu at a typical Kikai restaurant. It's so hard to know what to order w/o being able to read well. And we can't read well. It is an unexpected challenge.
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Same beach, 180 degrees turned around. That is Frosty, Aub's bike, there in the foreground.
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This is one of our favorite beaches at Kikai. This is the one where Aubrey got really sunburned before I came to join her. Unfortunately, the typhoon threw all this debris onto the beach and park area.
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Some post-typhoon waves crashing on the breakwater near the Kikai Town pier. This is the day after the typhoon left and we were absolutely desperate for something to do. These waves were spectacular.
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Here is the only traffic light in Kikai Town.
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More Engrish, this time in a Kikai grocery store. That's a "bakery" and a "deli" section.
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This is a typical road in Kikai Town. The goat pen is near here. The one stoplight is just down the road.
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Toward the "downtown" of Kikai town from near our house.
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Continuing on the oft-cited theme of goats, here are some more. These are in a pen made out of scrap wood and a van chassis along one of the arterial roads in Kikai Town.
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Why don't we put some... chili on it?

If anyone happens to remember that commercial (I believe it was for Sonic Drive-In, where they were advertising a new line of chili dogs), have a brief chuckle w/ me.
Hee-hee-hee.
I bring it up b/c that commercial was among the funniest, w/ the best comedic timing, I have seen in recent memory.

I also bring it up b/c we are celebrating. Today we will finish the leftovers for our big chili dinner that we ate on Sunday night. That's right - chili! I brought a packet or two of chili seasoning mix over to Japan w/ me and we got us some ground beef and some friends from Okinawa sent us some chili beans, so we invited a buncha people to our house to enjoy. Only one family accepted, but that's OK - more for us! I'm just kidding, but it turned out well. We invited Tokumoto-san, the librarian who has been so friendly and kind to us, and he brought his wife and daughter. We made it clear that we would have enough food, but they went ahead and brought this really big sushi plate anyway. (Truth be told, I think they were scared that they wouldn't like the American stew.)

'Twas a fun evening of laughter, Japanese being introduced to the joy of chili, and good conversation. They were indeed initially frightened by the chili, but once they tasted it, they wanted more and more. Oh heck yeah.

We also now have cell phones - yay! Email us if you want our phone numbers and/or cell phone text message email addresses.

I can't believe it!

So...I thought Israel's pulling out of Gaza was supposed to END violence there, not cause MORE.

Could it be that concessions of parts of land in Gaza and the West Bank for a Palestinian state is NOT, in fact, what the Pig-Jew Lynching Organisation (PLO) really wants?

Bad parenting

Surfing my way thru the news, after watching the highly entertaining exchange between Phil Donahue and Bill O'Reilly on the Iraq war, I came across this story about an explosion that destroyed a truck carrying militants and weapons in the Gaza Strip. What were they doing? This truck was in some kind of parade celebrating the pullout of Israeli settlers from Gaza. The story pointedly notes that 80 were wounded, including children.

Question: What kind of parent would take their child to a parade in the streets where
1) there will be violent men present;
2) there will be automatic weapons fired into the air and *homemade* (and thus, very possibly unstable) explosives in the vicinity;
3) there is a very good possibility of a strike by a vastly militarily superior enemy (Israel)?

Seriously - when we look upon the Middle East and attempt to consider what we are dealing w/ in terms of violent religious (read: Islamic) zealotry and boiling hot ethnic hatreds, we would do well to remember that such zealotry and hatreds reach the point even of overwhelming one of the most powerful human virtues - the parent's care for his/her child.

A pic of our table and part of the beach and resort hotel from the water's edge. That's Aub standing in the little hut thing.
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Alan before the ocean put the hurt on him. And just in case you're wondering, it is common for Japanese guys w/ long hair to use a headband that only a girl in America would wear. He was nice, though.
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Aub about to eat oceanwater on her first attempt at wakeboarding. The 1st was her only failed attempt. I personally ate ocean about 8 more times than she did.
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This really cool tree, which was low and big, at the wakeboarding beach had netting into which you could climb and hang around. I woulda kicked back for a quick siesta, but my back happened to be killing me that day (sunburn I mentioned) so I got down not long after this pic.
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Our hotel happened to have free breakfast. It was really tasty! Aub and Erica are having the American-style breakfast and I the Japanese-style one for a little variety. The Japanese one comes w/ an egg. We quite naturally assumed it was hard-boiled on the first day we ate there, so Aub tried to display her newly-acquired hard-boiled-egg-cracking skills. Except it was raw. No, I don't know enough Japanese to ask why a RAW egg would be included w/ someone's breakfast either.
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This has a weird story behind it. Aub went on a walk to the store thru Naze and happened to see this monkey caged up outside a floral shop. So she took us back to see the monkey later that night. We doubted it would still be there, but it was. It's not a large cage and the monkey could jump around it w/ amazing agility and be back within like 1 second. It made a lot of high-pitched sounds, not like I'd ever heard from a monkey before. We felt sad but were afraid to give it any food b/c we only had like chocolate and we didn't want him to attack us. I don't know why you'd keep a monkey in a cage outside your shop, but I don't know how to ask that in Japanese.
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Alan and Erica waiting excitedly for a bus in Naze. Aubrey thought the looks on our faces were really funny.
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Alan with a similar shot of mangroves. Yes, this is how he dresses most days even in Kikai, around town. You just don't mess w/ the sun around here, you know?
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A shot from above of where we went kayaking. I think most of those low green trees lining the river are mangroves.
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A typical highway sign in Japan. I'm glad they're partly in English!
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Aub cooling her heels (literally) in a waterfall near the kayaking place. We didn't actually take any pics of the kayaking b/c I thought it would kind of rough water and feared dunking our camera.
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Aub and Erica on their way to kayak thru the mangroves. Note the Ozark-like mountains the bkgrd. The entire island looks like this.
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A beautiful flower near the mangrove kayaking place on Amami.
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Dang, my back itches!

Just in case you were wondering, yes, I did indeed change the appearance of the blog. I like it a bit better this way, though I admit I copied shamelessly off of S.O.W. blog. Thanks for the tips, Bryan. I imitate b/c I like the way yours looks and b/c I am hopeless when it comes to figuring out how to write html stuff.

Anyway, I'm glad to be able to stream some football this morning. It's a Wednesday night game between Bowling Green and Boise St, and it's refreshing. Enjoying it.

And my back itches. It's recovering from the sunburn that it underwent during snorkeling on Saturday (and it's Thursday today!) and so it's turning less red every day. But it itches like a big dog. And for the last two nights it's been keeping me from sleeping well. Too bad for me... But the back is not peeling too badly yet (and I'm hoping that I can keep it from peeling badly by putting lotion on it 24 hours a day) and it's turning back to its normal pasty white, so I hope that I will be finished w/ this soon.

Finally finished studying the 2nd alphabet in Japanese (katakana) so now it's on to grammar and vocab. That's good b/c it means that I can now start to learn how to talk to people.

Erica and Aub in Naze.
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We are resting near the hotel after snorkeling. It was such nice weather! And it felt great to wash that salt water off, too!
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More of our snorkeling beach. That's Erica's back down there as she gets into the water.
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Aubrey and the goat again, w/ more beach in the background. See the waves breaking on the secondary "beach" of coral out there?
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This is Aubrey w/ her friend the goat. This goat really liked to rub up against her (not that I can blame him!) and sometimes ram her w/ his head. That is our snorkeling beach to the left.
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A view of the ocean from the bus on Amami.
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This is a jar of Sanity that was found in the men's bathroom on Amami. I know many of you have been wondering where it's been all this time. Found it for you.
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A view of Naze from the ferry, while I was coming in early Saturday morning.
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Tropical paradise island

Many of you may have heard a rumor of a "tropical paradise island getaway" that Aubrey and I may or may not have undertaken this past weekend.
I am here to tell you that such rumors are categorically untrue. Said getaway actually occurred on a SUB-tropical paradise island. Sorry to disappoint.

All joking aside (not really, but for now, I mean), Aubrey was gone to Kagoshima City all week for a Japanese-learning conference. She reported abject boredom while there - apparently there was little to do there and she was like the only one who didn't drink (and I'm not talking tea, and I'm not really talking "social drinking" either). Sounds like a recipe for blowing through about 5 good (and long) books over the course of the week. Alas, 5 good (and long) boox were not in her possession, so she was a bit on the idle-time-on-my-hands side. But she made it thru OK and boarded the all-night ferry from Kagoshima to Amamioshima along with a fellow JET named Erica, who lives in Kagoshima. A friend hooked them up with a more-or-less private room w/ bunk beds and curtains that you can draw across the bed to shut out the light. Nice deal - and it usually costs quite a bit more. So they got some sleep before their 5 am arrival. I, meanwhile, boarded a similar ferry at 5 am in Kikai and arrived in Amami at like 7:40 am. Our 1st move was to our hotel in Naze (the ferry also docks in Naze), which we found w/ little difficulty thanks to Erica's Japanese skill. Before the weekend was out, we would owe a lot to Erica's Japanese skill. Quite thankful for it.
Anyway, once we dropped off most of our stuff at the hotel front desk (check-in wasn't until 2 pm) and got some breakfast, we took an hour-long (and quite scenic) bus ride to a beach on the extreme south of the island (Naze being at the north edge). The bus dropped us off at a hotel and they rented us each a pair of swimming fins, a snorkel, and a mask.
The beach was very pretty and the water was perfect. Blue, clear, not too cold, not too hot. Like Baby Bear's porridge, it was. Mmmm, porridge.
Anyway, we got all lathered up w/ sunscreen and walked slowly across the rocky rocks (which really hurt our feet) to a depth appropriate for snorkeling. If we put our fins on, it hurt less but was harder to walk.
It seems that a lot of the beaches on Kikai and Amami have a lagoon-type setup to them b/c of the coral growth. You'll see shallow water (with lots of coral patches, if it's not all coral) for about 50-60 meters, and then waves breaking on a secondary and barely visible "beach" of coral at the edge, at which open ocean begins. This beach was no different. So we had to try to be careful where we stepped, but besides the pain of walking on rocks, had no mishaps. And once the snorkeling began, it was awesome!
We saw lots of really interesting fish. We saw a couple of clown fish scratching their bellies on and hiding in a sea anemone. I saw one that was chubby, w/ white spots on a black background on his back, and then orange spots on a purple bkgrd on his sides; each time another fish would pass by him he would spin around them once and then continue on his way. Except then once a fish of the same species approached him and they spun around really fast like 12 times before continuing on their way.
Most of the fish we saw I don't have names for. We didn't see any stryper fish or any deep-sea fangly fish, but I'd say it was still really rewarding. On the sea floor we saw weird blue starfish and some sea slug-looking things as well as alot of crabs and different kinds of coral.
My big mistake was not wearing a T-shirt while swimming. We were out for at least 2.5 hours, and the sunscreen didn't hold up. My back is now pretty red and I've had to sleep on my stomach and side for 4 days. It's pretty unpleasant, yes. Thanks for asking. Never go snorkeling w/o a T-shirt on or at least applying sunscreen to your back once per hour.
My other mistake was wearing my nice Teva sandals in the water out to a patch of rocks that were above water, about 30 meters from shore. I left them on these rocks since they were above water and continued snorkeling. But then the tide came in, and when we were finished snorkeling, I couldn't find my sandals or the rocks where I had left them. I was really bummed and so flailed around in the water for about 20 minutes before getting really tired and deciding to follow the waves to shore to see if they had been carried there. Praise God! I knew that my sandals float, but along the rocky shore I was easily able to find them. Very thankfully, I put them back on and trudged back to shore. We were really sore, thirsty, hungry, and a bit sunburned (my back turned out to be the worst of us three) but we had a great time.

The next day we relaxed a bit and tried kayaking in the mangrove park, among the famous mangroves. It was fun but neither very challenging nor very long, so we were a bit disappointed. We went to an Italian restaurant that night, which tasted good but was a bit more expensive than I would have liked.
Monday, a national holiday in Japan, we got up early, left the hotel, and took the bus to another hotel/resort, where we hung out on the beach and wake-boarded mostly. That was pretty fun indeed. Neither Erica nor I had ever wakeboarded, so it took a while to get to a standing position on the board while the Sea-Doo was pulling us, but Erica managed it more quickly than I did. I fell down like 8 times before catching on, and I was the one who had gone water-skiing before! But at least I made it up, and once I did it was really fun. I could see the coral patches gliding past me under the clear water in the coral lagoon, so it was a little scary but invigorating. Aubrey handled it like a pro and so spent the longest time on the wakeboard. But she paid for it - she is the most sore of us today. She said she fell one time just b/c her leg was getting so tired that she needed to rest.
After doing all the wakeboarding we could handle, we took our flight back to Kikai. The flight to Kikai, by the way, is all of 10 minutes - it's the shortest commercial flight in the world.

So that was our vacation. Great time, pretty expensive really, but we learned alot about traveling in Japan and managed to avoid any huge disasters.

Trying something here - I want to put our picture as a profile picture and so will try using this one. This is us about 3 months ago at the Korean House in Del City, OK. Highly recommend the bulgogi there.
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This is the other side of our house, thru which we rarely enter. It is more convenient for us to enter on the other side. Ours is that first covered area w/ the wooden pillars. All this vegetation you have seen in these last few pictures is not nearly as lush and green after the typhoon. Alot of it is gone and the rest is all beat-up and shredded.
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Another view of the corner of our house. To the right is the other entrance of our house.
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This is one of the uncomfortably large spiders on Kikai. This one's body is about an inch long. Ick! Fortunately, they haven't yet ventured indoors.
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From the same place, turned around 180 degrees. That beautiful woman w/ a bike is not always there, but she was when I snapped the pic. That's Aub's bike w/ a useful (for shopping) basket on the front. The bike's name is Frosty.
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This is our house from the back on a typical (ie, sunny) day. The 1st residence on the right is a neighbor, and our house's entrances (one leads to the entryway and one to the bathroom) are between those three wooden pillars there. Our washing machine is the white thing w/ the hose between 2 of them, and hanging to dry is a white T-shirt. That long trench is where the water from the bathtub, kitchen sink, and washing machine (but not the toilet, thankfully) drain. Said trench leads to the main storm sewer.
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Nastiness

You know, I've heard it said that James White is a "strident debater." And I'd thought I'd heard some passion and meanness in the Alan Dershowitz-Alan Keyes debate in 2000.
And then I heard the debate between George Galloway and Christopher Hitchens, which took place less than a week ago.
I guess I post about it just to keep everything in perspective - I don't know if I will ever hear half as many ad hominem arguments in any one debate in my life again. You might be interested. The topic is the War in Iraq, and is bandied about by a slick Englishman (Hitchens) and a belligerent Scotsman (Galloway).

A side note on football

On the subject of OU football, it appears that I picked a great year to go out of country. But just for fun, see this article from ESPN and let's walk down Memory Lane.

In particular, see this sentence:

OU ranks 113th nationally in passing and passing efficiency after attempting no passes in the second half of the Sooners' 31-15 victory over Tulsa last week. The Sooners had 42 yards passing in that game -- the lowest since throwing for 38 yards against Syracuse in 1997 in the forgettable John Blake years. The Sooners had never passed for fewer than 100 yards in Stoops' previous 80-game coaching tenure.

All I want to say is that OU won that game against Syracuse in 1997. Donovan McNabb was the Syracuse QB, the Orangemen were nationally ranked, I was present, and John Blake extended his contract by one year just before we the students ran onto the field to celebrate.


This is not to say that I don't think that OU's quarterbacks have played horribly. Hey guys, do better!

Our cheerful (ie, pre-mild-seasickness) supper on the ferry in one of the common rooms. This is about 7:30 pm.
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The ferry provides big common sleeping rooms, about 33 feet by 16 feet. These rooms each have a bunch of sleeping mats and a blanket for each one. The "pillow" is a not-very-soft foam rectangle thing, and it's not very comfy. Fortunately, we grabbed a corner and my smart wife brought regular pillows from home so we were not relying on those rectangles. The guitar I later removed from the wall hook when the ship started rocking w/ the ocean waves.
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