Sushi Boat

backdate...November 8, 2005

This was from our first night in Tokyo, we ate sushi. As we finished our meal the sushi chef was preparing this "boat load" of food.

Narita Airport, Japan

With out Thanksgiving, Narita went straight to "Hello Kitty" Christmas. There were two trees set on opposite sides of the shuttle tram lobby. Garland was strung across the world clocks map.

It was a little too cute and a shock having just leaving the tropics where Christmas was the last things on our minds. Heck we had just seen the Happy Thanksgiving banner only four hours earlier in Guam.

Kaday Stone Path, Yap, FSM

All of the villages on Yap have men's houses which you get to by walking a stone path. The one at Kaday is the best that we saw, so we visited it one last time on our last day in Yap.

This is a picture of the path. All paths, most roads, and most boundaries in Yap are lined with Yellow or Red plants. The path is stone and you can see the worn part down the middle. It is the duty of the residents of the village to clean the plants out of the rocks and remove fallen trees or other debris.

You usually have give a tribute to the village to walk their path, $3 is common. You also need to ask permission to take people pictures, but when you do they stop what they are doing and pose with a smile. So no pictures of people doing common things.

We are in Guam at the moment, sleeping for 6 hours until our flight back to Japan, then Houston, and finally Dallas. The longest Thanksgiving ever! See y'all soon.

Yap Caverns & Magic Kingdom, Yap, FSM

This was a picture taken by Ron Ledgerwood on our final day of diving. This was an absolutely incredible day with which to end our trip. These two dives were outside the reef, so there was a rough boat ride in the swells to the dive site. All hands made it with no sea sickness.

The first dive was the Yap Caverns. These are not caves, but rather a three-dimensional labyrinth. There were a few swim throughs with a covered over head, but most were open to the surface.

On the second dive, Magic Kingdom, we saw several schools of trigger fish and parrot fish. L found a tiny starfish, which we will post when we get our underwater film is developed. We also saw three sharks, small white tipped reef sharks. No danger, but a thrill anyway. There were also many schools of tiny fish in all colors.

We had dinner this evening with the owner of the credit union here and then returned home. We are so drained, that we are heading to bed early. Tomorrow, we will have a short tour and will then pack for our flight out at 7:30PM. We will be in Guam at 9:00PM. We fly out first thing on T-day morning to Japan, layover 5 hours, and then leave for the Houston at 5:20PM.

We arrive in Houston 12 hours later, but at 2:00PM --before we left!!??!!?? brief layover then on to Dallas.

Colonia, Yap, FSM

Just uploaded this morning...new video. On our dive yesterday, Ron filmed the manta as it crossed over us. To set the seen, I was laying on my belly looking up at a "cleaning station" places that the manta know there will be fish to clean their skin of parasites. Leslie was to my left. I felt the dive master tap my leg and turned to look at him. He pointed off in the distance. I tapped Leslie and she looked too. We saw the manta "flying" towards us. I rolled over on to my back to watch. The manta flew right over the top of me, no more than 10 feet away.

In this video, the first stream of bubbles you see are mine and the second are Leslie's. The video is here www.justusconsultants.com/manta2.mpg.

It looks like we may dive again on Tuesday.

Many Different Places, Yap, FSM

Today was a full day that could have ended at 1:00 and I would have been completely satisfied. This was our second day of diving. The first dive was uneventful. We were diving at a second site know for mantas. We did see one breech, or jump out of the water as we boated to the dive site, but did not see on under the water. The picture here is from Ron Ledgerwood.

Many cool pictures were taken by my brother-in-law Ron ledgerwood. You can see some of them on his blog entry and here, and here. We took some, but alas it was with a film camera and we will not be able to see them until after we get back.

Our second dive was to return to the same place as the first dive and we waited for about 15 minutes, then a manta appeared. It swam towards us, in fact it swam directly over my head, not 10 feet away. It is late and I do not have the words to describe it. Perhaps tomorrow.

Not to diminish the other activities today by a short description, but in short we saw some World War II canons and a search light, the wreckage of a Zero fighter, the wreckage of Continental Airlines plane that skidded off the side of the runway in 1972, and a second Japanese plane that was likely a cargo or transport.

We had a traditional Yapese lunch, watched a traditional Yapese ceremonial dance, and then attended a banquet for the Yap Visitor's Bureau.

Colonia, Yap, FSM

Today we did the tourist thing and visited galleries, gift shops, and attempted to visit the governor who enjoys meeting people. As his office is across the hall from L's brother-in-law, this was not difficult. Alas, he was busy in a staff meeting.

We moved on to tour the national legislature and meet two senators from the outer island. They are friendly and warm folks. L later met the governor in passing and he gave her the key....to the restroom in the building. In the spirit of good relations with Texas, he instructed his assistant to lend out the private stock of TP. I guess that make her an ambassador. I missed out.

We spent part of the day watching the launch of a traditional canoe from the port area. There was a Japanese film crew filming a documentary and we were able to snap a few pictures.
Tomorrow, day two of diving. We are doing a light drift dive first and a second dive to see sharks. Should be cool.

Oh!, On Thursday's dive Ron took a video using his digital camera of the Manta ray we saw. It is a large file, but if you have a high speed connection it should load fairly quickly. If not and you are on dial up, it may take about 10 minutes: www.justusconsultants.com\manta.mpg.