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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Chillin' - Travlin' - Studyin' and McIntosh 2105

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This past week has been nice. I have been in Duluth; no extreme travels this week. It has been very pleasant chillin' out around home taking care of the mundane things. I am not sure why, but the mundane has been pleasant. We have a new organist at church this week. Just as I might guess, he is from Rochester NY. I meet a lot of people everywhere from Rochester. Several of my colleagues both in Duluth and Kansas are from Upstate NY. One of them from Webster/Ontario.

I finally got my McIntosh 2105 Power Amp back from the shop. They did a great job at Audio Classics. As I suspected, there was a lot more wrong with it than "just" the smoke that got out. Somehow they managed to put the smoke back in there and got it all tested and up to spec. It sounds great and really drives my Peavey PV115 Speakers. Certainly, the Peaveys are not the most efficient, but they can take really deal with what the amp gives'em. The UPS guy felt better about the 102 pound package after we talked about what was inside. I had to tell him about the magic of magnetic energy that gets stored in the iron of a transformer core.

I surprised myself a little bit of how little jet lag I had coming back from the Middle East. I guess I am just getting used to it and can compensate. I have trips planned for France and Russia in the next few weeks. The weather was below my personal minimums this weekend for flying. I need to get serious about my instrument rating. That means what serious usually means to me... studying. And with studying theme, I am going to start another set of classes for Portuguese. They say your first non-native language is the hardest. I sure hope so. It is difficult. I keep coming back to the fact that there really is not such thing as failure in personal endeavor, only quitting.

A couple more pics from last week.




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Honshu and Okinawa

-
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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