Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge

Night was falling, and I was lost on the streets of an unknown city, thousands of miles from a familiar face. No GPS, no phone, and all out of food and water. All I had was one critical bit of information.
My car was parked by a white and red radio tower.

If it hadn't been towed already.

Crazy Trip to Kyoto

I decided I was going to make a day trip to Kyoto. Its just a 40 minute ride on the bullet train and is very tourist and English friendly. It turned out to be a harder trip then I thought it would be.

Leah woke up with a leg pain. She complains of leg pain quite often, especially when she is asked to clean her room. So I just figured that she slept on it funny and that when we started going that her pain would go away. We walked slowly and stopped when she needed to. The pain never went away, it did lessen as the day went on, but she walked slowly all day.

Singapore: First Two Days

So, I'm in Singapore right now for a vacation and VISA renewal. I didn't take many pictures so far, since I hadn't looked up the local photography laws, so this will be mostly text.

The flight was nice. Mostly watched movies the whole time. "Her" (emotionally touching, philosophically bankrupt), "Captain America: Winter Soldier" (absurd but entertaining), and "Rob the Mob" (Didn't finish, no redeeming quality).

Arrived at airport, no trouble getting money, buying train ticket, walking to the room I'm renting. Really warm and humid, I sweat a lot. Now with videos!

Crazy Weekend in Korea: Coda

So, we've finally gotten out of Japan. Now all we need to do is get back.

The view from our hotel room. Seoul is on the horizon.

It's Saturday afternoon. I've just checked my e-mail and found that, although things are as good as could be expected at work, there's trouble with our flights.

Namely, we might not have flights.

Crazy Weekend in Korea: Saturday

So, we get up early Saturday, and set off once more for the train station. Anna has been (with good justification) giving me a hard time about getting on the wrong train yesterday. She has checked and double-checked the station info, and written everything down. We're prepared this time!

We stop by the Starbucks in the station and have some breakfast, feeling like champions for planning ahead with enough time left over to stop and eat. We ended up sitting next to a group of three young women, who were entirely too pleased with our daughters.

The middle one doesn't seem pleased that I'm photographing them.
Sorry Japanese Girls!

We arrive at the platform and are immediately confused again. But this time, instead of jumping on whatever train is closest at the time, we wait for a few minutes. Anna figures out which train to catch, and I ask a platform attendant who gets us in the right place to catch said train. We get on, and everything seems to be going well.

Crazy Weekend in Korea: Friday

It's Friday, the big day! We're going to Korea! Anna has a few things left to do before we leave, but I convince her to come to work with me and spend the morning with the kids at the park near the factory.

This is my first mistake of the day.

Crazy Weekend in Korea: Backstory

The plan was to leave after work on Friday, spend a couple of nights in Korea doing sight-seeing, and then fly back Sunday afternoon... Things didn't go by the plan.

Here is our story!

Nagoya Podcast Post

I'm putting up a series of audio rambles about stuff I think of when driving to and from work in Nagoya.
I would upload them directly on this site, but there's no convenient way to host audio files. Get on that Blogger!

First podcast: Cute Trucks with associated transcript.
Second podcast: Floods, Convenience, and English with associated transcript.

At least one more is on its way.

Trip to Yoro

Today, we went to the town of Yoro, at the foot of the Yoro mountains, right next to Mount Yoro, and saw the Yoro Waterfall. In Japanese, the consonants "r" and "l" are combined, so I amused myself by internally substituting "YOLO" for all of these instances.

The trip to Yoro is about 45 minutes in good traffic, or just over 80 minutes by train. There are tradeoffs both ways. In the car we can be loud and go at our own pace. On the train, I can look around at the scenery instead of paying attention to the road. We took the train this time, but we may go back by car at some point. It was good for the soul to get out of the city.

Drive to Work

So, every week day, I drive to work. It takes about 45 minutes, more or less depending on traffic. Here are some pictures from along the way.

Here's the first bridge over the road. This is where the trains pass over, just North of Nagoya Station. We walk this way on the way to the nearest subway station as well.

Travel Day 3

Slept fitfully, woke several times during the night. Humid and clammy. Woke at 4:15, packed, walked to the curb. Found a couple of geckos on the outside of the building. The girls try to catch them, but meet no success. There are glass panes mounted flush in the pavement, overgrown with fern on the inside. Perhaps they used to be floodlights for the outside of the building? More spoiled splendor.

The taxi didn't show up at 5. Called, he was still asleep apparently? Different guy showed up about ten minutes later, took us to the airport.

Travel Day 2

After making it back to the Hawaii International Airport, I went down to the luggage office. Our car seat was still missing. Fortunately, after some struggling with the computer system, the clerk got the rest of our luggage checked all the way through to Nagoya, so we won't have to haul all that stuff around Guam.

The lobby is a lovely place to wait while the paperwork gets done.

Travel Day 1

A few observations from the first day of travel.

Lots of these flowers fallen on the sidewalk. They smell lovely. We brought a few back to the hotel room.

It turns out that, when they say "50 pounds maximum" they don't mean "87 pounds is okay too". Also, United sells cardboard boxes for $15, but charges $200 if you don't want to re-pack your bags. Also, all of the in-flight entertainment is locked behind a pay-wall. Blech.

Waypoint Camarillo

My wife and kids have been here for a couple weeks now, so they have already asked and answered most of the important questions. When I arrived they were eager to inform me of the particulars of our stay. Where we were sleeping, and the local sources of food were their primary concerns. All good things to think about in the middle of an upheaval.

Leaving Mukilteo

You know the feeling when you're about to jump off of something very tall? Where you want to, but your body is telling you that you really shouldn't?
Very much that feeling right now.

Also, I didn't pack a toothbrush... classic.

The Sprint at the End

So, Anna did a marvelous job of packing up the house. I've been living in a nearly empty building for the past two weeks. Of importance to this post, a "nearly empty building" still contains a surprising amount of stuff.

Getting to Japan

Choosing a flight to Japan from the US isn't too difficult. Basically you have to weigh travel time and layovers against departure date and cost. Our scenario brings an additional factor, that of three children under the age of five years old.