So I came home for a week at the end of May/beginning of June, and then returned again to Okinawa. I was in Okinawa for the rest of June and the first few days of July (28 days total). Currently I am once again in the Kansai airport in Osaka, Japan, waiting for my connecting flight back to San Francisco. I feel like I have blogged more in this airport than in anywhere else in the world (not true, of course).

Anyway, I haven't posted anymore pictures of signs with goofy translation errors, or other cultural oddities, because, frankly, they all blend in for me now. I feel like I see more things as "normal" now, although there are some things that are still just wrong in my book, most of them being culinary in nature. (Why, oh why would you ruin a perfectly good pizza with ring shaped hunks of squid?)

So what I do have to report on is that I finally bought a new camera. It is still an inexpensive model, because I am a tight-wad. It is also a stylish blue color, that doesn't at all fit me, but that is also because I am a tight-wad (the blue ones were on sale. Apparently they didn't fit anyone else either.) So although the newness of Japan has worn off a bit, the newness of my camera has not, and I was on the lookout for something interesting to take a picture of.




So in airports across the world now there are designated smoking rooms. You get used to them. You smell them before you see them, and once you pass them if you just keep walking the smell goes away. Anyway, I was passing this one and walked by, and then stopped and went back and took a picture. There is an obvious problem here if you put "For smoking adults only." Where are the kids going to smoke? Some people are just thoughtless.

Anyway, so on this trip I went golfing for the first time in Okinawa. And the same thing happened that happens every time I go golfing. I lose horribly. I had a great time. I stated at least 10 times that I need to go to the driving range and practice before golfing again. As usual, I enjoyed the time outdoors and so the next day we went again. It was my first time on a small irons course. Nothing but par 3s, and I really liked that. The second time we went it was close to their closing time, so we did all nine holes in an hour and ten minutes. We jogged the whole way. Did my score suffer? Yes. Did it matter? No. So I heard a long time ago that if you video tape your swing, and then look at it, it is easier to see what you need to change (as opposed to having people constantly tell you how to fix it, which I haven't found totally helpful up to this point...) So I did that, and it was really educational. I decided against posting that video however. That would be a waste of bytes on some server somewhere.

What was cool is that the course is right under the incoming flight path to Kadena Air Base, and we saw a bunch of fighter jets throughout the round. They were SO close that we could hear the hydraulics that controlled the flaps and stuff. It sounded like a scene from Transformers. It was so cool. Unfortunately after the tenth fly-over I thought "I should get video of that." Too late.

So I am so glad to be heading home to see my family. We have been spread all over the place, and it is high-time we had some time together. Unfortunately, it looks like I will be back out in OKA a time or two this year, so we will have to make the most of the time we have together over the next few weeks.

I have a few other topics to post about, but I'll wait and work on those later.