Honshu and Okinawa

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I am back. I spent 10 days in Japan, 5 days for work on the main island of Honshu and 5 days of solo adventure in Okinawa. Travel is so invigorating dispite the uncomfortableness. Jetlag, anxiety, crowds, and other discomforts aside, it is mind-expanding and rewarding. Work went well. I flew a new airline (Skymark) from Tokyo to Naha. I am always wary of strange discount airlines and all the traps they set. However, I had a great expereince with "Sky". I was actually shocked. Super easy checkin at the airport, no extra fees even with extra luggage. The primary mission in Okinawa was to visit the Peace Park and the suicide cliffs of Okinawa. From what I understand, at the end of WW2 the inhabitants were encouraged to commit suicide rather than surrender to the Americans and get tortured and eaten. Besides other types of suicide, they jumped off the cliffs at the Southern end of the main island. If you have seen the original color footage taken at the time, I am sure you ...
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Work is kind of slow compared to how it has been.

This is a picture of me at Scott base a few nights ago. Thursday nights are American night, inviting us Americans over from McMurdo station. They have a store and a pub. The pub is much nicer than anything over at our base. It is more like a regular English style pub where people come and talk and it is more like a living room than a saloon.

The ham radio shelter here on station is organizationally "unowned." I was pretty disappointed about the lack of care and support for amateur radio at McMurdo. But now, I have at least one email saying a department "does not" have the resposibility of the ham station. Organizationally, it appears that having the responsibility is good if it works for you and bad if it works aganist you. And that a choices can be made in this regard. South Pole station has a Amateur radio club that has offical ties into the organization and they have an active ham radio community. It is totally different at McMurdo. A couple of us pried 20 meters open the other night with contacts in Hawaii, Japan, Pacific Maritime Mobile, Australia and New Zealand.

The other pic is our National Science Foundation station representative posing with community-made gingerbread houses at Christmas dinner. I like the the mobilehome one complete with a car getting an engine pulled.

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Honshu and Okinawa

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Image
I am back. I spent 10 days in Japan, 5 days for work on the main island of Honshu and 5 days of solo adventure in Okinawa. Travel is so invigorating dispite the uncomfortableness. Jetlag, anxiety, crowds, and other discomforts aside, it is mind-expanding and rewarding. Work went well. I flew a new airline (Skymark) from Tokyo to Naha. I am always wary of strange discount airlines and all the traps they set. However, I had a great expereince with "Sky". I was actually shocked. Super easy checkin at the airport, no extra fees even with extra luggage. The primary mission in Okinawa was to visit the Peace Park and the suicide cliffs of Okinawa. From what I understand, at the end of WW2 the inhabitants were encouraged to commit suicide rather than surrender to the Americans and get tortured and eaten. Besides other types of suicide, they jumped off the cliffs at the Southern end of the main island. If you have seen the original color footage taken at the time, I am sure you ...
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