Scouting has become a part of my life again

Yes, I was a Boy Scout once. A mildly successful one. I got the badges, heck I even got THE badge, but soon afterwards I got married (sounds weird to put it in perspective like that) and I dropped teenagerishness like a hot potato and moved on, or so I like to think. Anyway, it has been fun to get re-involved with Scouting. I am a leader for a group of 11-year old scouts, and Collin is now a Bear Cub Scout. Logan is just dying to be a scout and wants to do all of the cool stuff that Collin gets to do, so I see scouting pretty solidly in my future. And so far it has been nothing but fun.

So here are a few pictures from some recent scout hikes.

My first caveat: I shot all of these pictures with my G1 (cellphone.) Thus the acceptable, not exemplary, quality. So obviously we went and found some petroglyphs on our first hike. There were hundreds of them in this canyon, which made us wonder what was so special about this canyon? I think it was a sign yard. You know, the place where your local city or county construction crews keep their construction signs? When the prehistoric business owner needed to leave a message for passersby, why spend weeks chiseling it out of rock, when he/she could just run for a day through the desert barefoot, and come back the next day with a 200 pound rock already engraved with their message. Brilliant. Not to make light of a different culture, but I dare you to comment with your best guesses as to what these prehistoric billboards say. What about the picture above? Obviously it means Help Wanted: Dancer with Maracas and Fringy Outfit. Duh.

This is the popular holiday warning sign: Don't Use Christmas Tree for Ashtray. These are so intuitive. I bet they put the best-sellers right down by the trail. Trenton and Logan got to come on this hike because it was a family hike. Heather educated me on the fact that "Family Hike" and "Father/Son Hike" are in fact synonymous, so she stayed home with Taryn. The boys were true to their personalities. Logan was only happy if he was in front of EVERYBODY, and Trenton was tired and wanted to go home and watch TV as soon as we got to the trailhead sign 100 feet from the car.

Lizard Roadkill Ahead? This one is slightly less obvious.

Tie Your Goat To A Tree By The Tail Only? Don't Pee on the Cacti? Bighorn Sheep Should Use the Second Port-a-Potty From The End? Ok, I give up on this one.

And here are the boys. Collin in the uniform, Logan up on the rock, Trenton with the hat. Nice. That is all for that hike.

So this was a different hike. Again I'm shooting with my camera phone. The sun is so harsh in the desert that pretty much all of these pictures are washed out. Oh well. This one is a natural arch. The cool thing is that the arch is only about 8 inches tall. You could totally put miniature people on it and make a believable scene. It was cool.

Here is Collin sitting on another natural arch. I let him come on this hike even though it was for my 11-year old Scouts. He was hyper the whole time for some reason and was all over the rocks. He was the youngest one there and the first one back to the car.

Well, this has been another make-up posting. Another one bites the dust.

More weird pics

So I am cheating on this posting. How? I am posting a few last shots from my trip to Japan and I am going to date this blog as if I had come right home and posted them like I intended. Only I can't do it without fessing up. Counter-productive, right? Right.

These people sure love their Pokemon. This was a big Pokemon store in the middle of their swanky mall. Notice how the picture looks like I shot it from my waist. That is because I was totally trying to hide the fact I was taking pictures in their store. By this point in the week I was tired of the funny looks every time I pulled out my phone.


This was my favorite sign of the week. For those of you who are viewing this on your iPhone, I'll read it for you: "Foodiun Bar. Quiteness---it is the summit of the clouds that can be seen at the bottom of the lake." Classic. Needless to say, this is my desktop image on my laptop now.

So on my last night there Justin, who I unfairly referred to as my tour guide in the previous post, took me to a more authentic place to eat. We met up with his girlfriend for the meal, but I try not to post other people's pictures without their permission, so I will focus on the food rather than them. It was cool. We sat down and there was a big round hole in the table. Then the little 5'2" waitress came out lugging a big iron pot of burning coals that fit right down into the hole. The menu consisted of individual plates of vegetables and different cuts of raw meat. I let Justin and Miho do the ordering. Anyway they brought out the raw meet, which we then cooked ourselves at the table. Near as I could tell they were ripping off the American backyard BBQ concept. (Yes, that was a joke.) Anyway, Justin did most of the cooking. So, just to impress my mother who threatened me with a mission to Japan my entire growing up years, here is a short list of what I ate: fried mushroom, fried onion, kimchi (sp?-- it is spicy pickled cabbage), cow's tongue, tofu, and rice. For the record I wouldn't have eaten any of that when I was younger. No, I didn't even like rice.



My hosts were kind enough to ask the waitress for a fork for the white guy, and after a couple of exchanges in Japanese they brought me out a fork. The only problem is that the only fork they had was a toddler's fork (pictured above.) My favorite features of the fork: Pretty pastel pictures of animals to look at when I got bored during my meal, extra large non-sharp tines so that when I slipped going for a chunk of cow-tongue I wouldn't impale myself.


Actually, I thought that the chopsticks were half the fun of the meal. I had practiced on and off throughout the week, but these were a real challenge because they were metal and especially slippery. In the end I mastered them, err, well, I got through the meal. Here is a picture of me showing off my chop-sticking skills. (Hint: When in doubt the shish-kabob maneuver is a great fall-back move with the chop-sticks.)

Since I spent a substantial amount of time on trains, I thought I would get a picture of one. Notice the spy-angle of my shot again. Yep, I casually took this shot with my phone while looking the other direction. I could have been James Bond, except I don't own a tux.

This is funny. That apartment building is mostly vacant (it turns out they are still in a recession, although it is hard to tell sometime.) Anyway, I hope that whoever thought up this trick with the lights got a bonus or something. Very creative.

MMmmm. I was waiting in the airport, enjoying a DP and decided to get one last shot of an American icon with a Japanese twist. Dr. Pepper with Japanese on it is cool, but over there it had Coca-Cola branding marks too. Weird.

Well, that was all I had from this trip. A lot of the other cool stuff I saw and learned about was military in nature, so I'm not sure how much I should comment on. Nothing secret of course, but being on a military base got me thinking a little more about national security. I did get to see an aircraft carrier though (from the street). Those things are crazy big. Anyway, I have a couple of make-up posts to do, and then I will have a posting about Okinawa.

Ciao.

So here are my Tuesday night pictures. I am super tired, so I didn't venture far.


This is another shot of my ferris wheel. It is mine because I can see it out of my window. It is a ferris wheel because it is big and round and people can ride on it.


There is a 5 story mall with a 20 story hotel on top of it next to my hotel. It also has a train station under it (these people are great at multi-tasking apparently!) This is a sign in the mall to tell you stuff. The places it pointed to sounded snazzy, but my picture isn't big enough (on my blog anyway) to see what it says, so just make something up that sounds Japanese when you look at it and you will understand why it is cool.


This was next to a marble fountain. I couldn't help myself.


I think they just want me to be excited for the new store. I wonder if Golem knows about this one?

Ok, enough of this sillyness! I need sleep!

Since my last posting actually got a comment or two, I thought I should put a few more pictures up:)


There were fancy crepe stands everywhere. Really fancy. Crepes. Weird.

That is what I had for dinner Monday night. Yep, like all smart people I went to Japan to have Indian food. The Butter Chicken Curry was very rich, I couldn't eat very much, but the big triangle pancake thing was delicioso! I forgot what it was called. Lon? Lan? Something like that.

Ok, so this was the dangdest thing I ever saw. (Yes, I am flexing my American vocabulary.) We popped into a fancy arcade for a look-see and there was this big seating place with a screen the size of the whole wall showing a virtual horse race!! And the chairs each had its own screen so anyone could walk up and sit down and play like they were just having a day at the derby! I suppose there was some actual game involved (I hope!) like betting with virtual money or something, but that is just dumb. Even if you win at this horse race you lose your money. You might as well go to a real horse race where if you win you actually get something back. Crazy.

Why did I take a picture of McD's? I don't know. There was just a big bucket of fries floating above the door and I grabbed for my camera. That just happens sometimes.

There I am. The picture is out of focus, but you aren't missing anything. This pic doesn't do the scene justice either. I am standing in front of the busiest crosswalk in the world. Apparently over a million people cross this intersection EVERY DAY. And there were still people stupid enough to try to DRIVE THROUGH IT. Hah. And there were like 5 huge advertisement screens like in Times square. It was pretty crazy.

Somehow I didn't take any pictures of the crazies we saw walking around, or the Nigerean thugs or any of the price tags. When I was in London last year I thought that place was extremely overpriced, but I'm thinking Tokyo takes the cake. I walked through a mall where they casually displayed watches with a 5,100,000 yen price tag. That is over $51,000. Shoes going for $150US were just stacked on the sidewalk like a "Big 5 Going Out Of Business" sale. These people are nuts.

We also managed to get lost on the subway system. We caught an express train north when we wanted to go south. What do you do when you don't read Japanese and are lost? Pull out your iPhone (my tour guide had one) and get train directions back to where you want to go. It tells you what train to catch and when (up to the minute) to get you back to where you want to be.

This was all Monday night, so I'll cover Tuesday next time.

An awesome view...

So this is the view out of my window this evening. So far I really like Tokyo (which is based on a whole 2 hours of experience!) And why do I like it here? Everything seems very organized. Just waiting for the bus is organized. They had lines drawn on the ground telling you where to stand and everything. The city itself looks kind of older and dirty in some ways, but some of that might be because you can tell that everything was built for function, not beauty. Just some thoughts ...