Camping

So we went camping about two weeks ago to Hamada Beach. It's on Oshima Island, which is just a small island around here.

Here is a funny thing I found posted


We were on a cliff over looking the water. It was a really nice place with a cooking area, running water, showers and even washers/dryers. The Japanese way of camping is pretty nice, but not private. There were only small hedges separating each campsite, but luckily the Japanese schools aren't out yet so there weren't very many people there and they placed us away from everyone else.

A jelly fish, we found a couple and took them out of the water.

The beach was nice, except for the sand. I think it's man made so the pebbles were really big and hurt to walk on unless you had sandals on.

It was really fun and I think we're going again this weekend but up to the dam in the mountains.

Arita Chinaware Festival

So in May I went on an ITT trip to a town called Arita, which is south of here on the next island down from us. That area is known for it's china factories and they were having their annual chinaware festival where the vendors are on the streets selling their stuff that isn't completely perfect. I got a lot of great stuff for only $160 bucks.

Here are some pictures of the town.

It was about 6miles worth of vendors!

Here is all my loot. 6 bowl es, plates, cups and small plates. Then some serving dishes. Next year I think I'm going to get a whole matching place setting.

Spartacus!

So Ryan's wanted a kitten ever since we've gotten Mozart, our other cat, because she isn't as playful as he wanted her to be. So we've been on the waiting list at the vet clinic for a kitten. Well last Friday we got a call from my friend Leah who's a technician there that there was a kitten coming in later that day. So she called us when he got there and decided to take him home. I guess a momma cat had 4 kittens that she left on some one's saw dusk hill on base and only came back for 3 of the kittens, so he was left there for a few hours. So the people brought him to the vet. Well we had to take him out in town to see a vet because the vet wasn't in here on base. So we take him out in town to get his eyes looked at because most Japanese cats get this respiratory infection that causes their eyes to gunk up and glue shut. So we take him out in town and the vet there speaks VERY small English, and he says that he might be blind. So we got really upset because we weren't quite sure if we could handle a blind 4-5 week old, but on Sunday we got him to play around and he's not blind, his eyes just opened a while ago and doesn't have the best eyesight yet. So his name is Spartacus and is so cute! Mozart isn't quite sure if she likes him yet, but she's slowly getting there.

So scary!

Here are some videos of him playing.

China!

I know! It's about time. So I'm just going to go through the pictures and say what they are.


These two are when we got to the airport in Beijing




This is at the nations park right outside the water cube and birds nest

Right across the street is the birds nest, water cube and other stadiums

This was on our way to the Great Wall, it's a Disney Land that some rich Indian guy tried building but ran out of money

This is Cinderellas castle

We went to the Ba Da Ling section of the Great Wall. I didn't realize that there were sections of the wall around different parts of the country.

A watch tower

Of course we took the harder section to walk. The sections that you walk on aren't really the originals. They are redone otherwise it would all fall apart. When we were driving up there we saw a section of the original and it was about 3ft tall and in shambles.

This is the boat we took to get to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace was so nice... but we ran over our time at the Great Wall that we only got about an hour at the Summer Palace.

The Summer Palace

Part of the walkway at the Summer Palace

This is the marble boat

I don't remember where this was at.

This is all Tienanmen Square

Commies

There are 9,999 rooms in the Forbidden City

The Emperor would have around 3,000 concubines and about 6,000 uni-sex servants, which were men who weren't men anymore so they weren't a threat to the Emperor's concubines.

This was some place to look out over the Forbidden City

This is from the view point looking over the Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square. See how smoggy it was!

We took a rigshaw ride through part of the city, they went really fast and were really crazy drivers!

This was the ceiling of one of the walkways; everything there was so ornate!

This is the Temple of Heaven, where they prayed for a good harvest

Temple of Heaven

The duck dinner; which wasn't that great

On the street at sunset

One of the theaters we that we saw a kung fu show in

The Beijing Zoo was right across the street from our hotel, so we walked there on our free day. It's a small and depressing zoo; but the pandas were amazing!

Our hotel the Xiyuan, it was a 4star hotel

In the subway

An acrobat show we saw

Our tour guides, Maggie and Sonia.

It was a really fun trip. Ryan had the most fun shopping because you haggled with them and he loved haggling. I didn't like it because the place we went, the silk market, which was 4 stories high and had everything from clothes, fabric, electronics, purses, shoes, and jewlery, the sales people were vicious! One lady had Ryan pinned in the corner with her arms and I had to pull him out and then she yelled nasty stuff at us! Also, all the little blonde children were celebrities there. The Chinese would just walk up to them and touch them and take their pictures. The food was great there too; much better than Japanese food. It doesn't revolve around seafood so much. It was a great trip and I we're going to try to go to Hong Kong sometime. We're also going to Korea for Labor Day weekend!