Japan, Day 3 (Saturday, June 28, 2008)

Saturday morning we took the kids to a really cool obstacle course.  But first, a few random photos from the trip there.

Here's Lisa just down the street from Yumiko's Mom's house.

Yes, this is actually a fairly normal-sized street for a residential area like this.  Yes, it's a street for cars:

Yes, trucks do drive down it, too.  (I wish I had a shot of a garbage barreling down the road without hardly slowing down, but when that happens, I'm usually too busy jumping out of the way.)  And no, it's not one-way, and yes, I have seen cars pass each other on this road.  Pretty cool.  (The street is about 8 feet wide in the narrow spots.  The main road near her house [two lanes, plus cars parked on the sides against the curbs] is about 20 feet wide.)

If streets are this narrow, you may wonder how people park their cars.  The answer is, very close to each other:

Technically, they're overlapping, since the mirror for the second truck is extending forward past the back of the first.  You can't see it very well in this shrunk-down photo, but these are actually parked up on the sidewalk area.  The tires are about a half-inch from the drop-off of the curb, and on the opposite side they are maybe two inches from the planter.  I have another really cool parking picture, but it will have to come later when I find it.

Of course, since streets are really crowded for cars, many people ride bicycles, and park them in places like this:

Since land is at a premium, people want to build on every square inch of their lots, even if it's a weird-shaped parcel of land.

The close wall of this building is maybe 18 inches wide.

This is just a random shot of a typical neighborhood, taken from the train on the way.


By the way, I used Google maps to compare our neighborhood with Yumiko's Mom's, and then I went around and counted buildings.  It turns out that in the same space as our yard (admittedly larger than average for Boise), there is one retail store (a 7-11), three or four other businesses, two or three commercial parking lots, and somewhere between 170 and 200 standalone houses and apartment units.  This is on Yumiko's Mom's block, which doesn't have any very big apartment buildings.  (See the photo of Lisa above that started this post.  Most of Yumiko's Mom's block is like what you see on the right and left sides of the street.  The big building at the end of the street [21 stories] wasn't part of what I counted.)  Obviously the population density would be a lot higher if there were a 40-story apartment building like this one from near her house:

Okay, enough of that for now.  Anyway, we finally made it to the really cool obstacle course.  There were 45 different stations.  Here is a sampling of a few of them:

We had fun. :)

Japan, Day 2 (Friday, June 27)

Friday morning we went to the cemetery. In Japan they typically have common grave sites for a family, so the grave was for Yumiko’s father, uncle, and Hideki’s stillborn child Soudai (and in the future, Yumiko's mom, and his brother's family, and so on for generations to come). We pulled some weeds and cleaned it, took a few pictures, left flowers, and came back. It’s about two hours away, by train and bus.

In the afternoon I went to Shinjuku and dropped into the Marvell office. Most everybody was at a meeting, but I got to meet a few people. Then I visited B.I., a company I’ve done some translation work for over the past 12-13 years. I spent an hour or so talking to the people I’ve worked most closely with and rebuilding that relationship.

In the evening we went to an all-you-can-eat shabu-shabu restaurant – thinly sliced beef and pork, cooked in water with vegetables. It was really good.

Heading to Japan

To start out this "blog", I'll chronicle our trip to Japan this summer.  At the rate I'm going, it will take a year to tell about the 12 days I was there.  But something is better than nothing, right?

With that hope, we'll start with Day 1.

Here are a few photos of Boise taken from the airplane on the way to Japan, June 25, 2008.

The Boise Temple

Mom and Dad's house

Gravel pits on top, with the Maple Grove extension curving around.  Dalton Lane on the left.  The back of Mom and Dad's house, and their pool, stand out pretty well.  Just to make sure, here's a closeup...

Mom and Dad's house again

Our house

I've been trying for about 10 years to get a picture of our house from the air, and here finally succeeded for the first time in getting a recognizable photo.  This is just two days after we planted grass seed, so our brown dirt yard stands out pretty well.  This picture is from almost straight-on south; the large trees at the bottom are our neighbors', the large trees at the top are the locust trees along the front of our front yard.

Our house again

This time from the southwest.  This one is pretty blurry -- I finally get photos of our house from the air, and I had the shutter speed set too slow to freeze the vibration of the airplane.  Dang.  Oh well, better than nothing, right?

After a long flight, we finally made it to Nartita.  Actually, it wasn't too bad of a flight -- it's amazing how well the kids can keep themselves entertained.  It was a dramatically easier trip than last time, just a year and a half ago.  Here are some tired people and their luggage as the train pulls in to take us on the second to last leg of the trip -- about 17 hours into the 19-hour journey.