Journal lingqi's Journal: July 20th, 2004 1
July 20th, 2004 (3:09pm)
I suppose I won't get much work done today, as there are hundreds of email to read through and even more spam - after 10 days of inactivity they can certainly accumulate! Through the same ten days the amount of things I can / want to write has also filled the "to-be-written" cache several times over and I really wish I had the energy to keep this journal going through every evening.
Something like this happened in the last ten days, I am writing it down because I will forget way too soon if I don't.
- July 10th -
Head to Tokyo and attend a session of Jazz dancing lessons. Hang out in Tokyo for maybe 6 hours before everyone got ready and headed to Mt Fuji. After arriving at Kawaguchiko-guchi of the Yoshida track going up the mountain, we all headed up the mountain. about half hour later one member of the entourage suffered altitude sickness and turned back, the remaining eight divided into three groups and went up. three made it to the top at a little pass 4am (started hiking around 10:30pm), three others sometimes between 5:30-6:30, and the last two disappeared without a trace - apparently they decided life was worth living and turned back the same track.
- July 11th -
A long and tiring decent from Mt fuji that revealed an entirely different face of the mountain - going down the Gotemba track, which has a lengthy o-sunabashiri (big sand run), the six of us remaining, tired and dirty and hungry, made it to ~1,900 meters - 500 meters below where we started off, and went home.
- July 12th -
Wakeup is at 2:30am; after packing up, 5.30 train toward Haneda-airport. Missing a train didn't quite help the schedule, but we still managed to make it to the airport about 30 minutes before plane departure. The actual flight was a blur - combined with the lack of sleep the night before and the hike to Mt Fuji, I could have fell asleep on a bed of nails.
Picked up a car and headed to the hotel; the afternoon was spent going around to supermarkets (took an entire half-day!)
- July 13th -
Diving with a whale shark in its whole 8-metre glory. Almost losing my camera to the same shark when it thought that I was holding shrill. There was also a tiger-shark but he (she?) was very shy.
In the afternoon We all went to the beach and hung out in the warm waters, but not before getting sucked dry by the hordes of mosquitos that inhabit the area. The marks still remain on my body even now.
- July 14th -
Sea Kayak trip that included some snorkling and various other things but surprisingly little kayaking - I guess that's all well too since kayaking on open water (with wind trying to blow you the other way) is hard work. The afternoon we visited the Okinawa aquarium - it has a monstrous tank that houses some whale sharks and gigantic mantas. I didn't come close to losing my camera.
Something to note is that Okinawa has some relatively cheap fruit. I picked up a very large watermelon (maybe 10kg - it must have been 30cm across) for 1,500 yen - the same price near Tokyo would get me something the size of a basketball.
- July 15th -
Being the last day in Okinawa, a short trip to international street in Naha was in order. It was actually very touristy so it wasn't particularly fun. The afternoon was mostly dedicated to finding a particular restaurant serving boiled pig-feet.
Then, the flight back to Tokyo.
- July 16th -
A long day from the start - I forsaked my original plan of staying the six hours in Haneda-airport and instead went to a capsule hotel to get a shower and some decent sleep. After a mere three hours rest, I came back to the airport and boarded the plane to Sapporo's New Chitose Airport. When I arrived it was only maybe 9am. I got on the road at 10am, and visited cape Erimo (I think), which would be the south-east cape of the large island. Turning north, I passed Obihiro and slept at a road-side parking area several tens of kilometers north of the city. Total odometer count: 397.0km.
- July 17th -
After an early start at maybe 6am, I went north passing the east side of Taisetsusan, and headed toward the northernmost point of Japan, Cape Souya, finally arriving at maybe 7pm. I took rest in another car park, after visiting an onsen south of the cape. Total odometer count: 975.2km.
- July 18th -
The third day was also incredibly long, making my way from almost the northernmost point of hokkaido to nearly the southernmost, passing Otaru on the way to reach Hakodate. Not having enough energy by the end (when I left Hakodate it was already past midnight), I finally slept at an ocean side parking area about 200km away from Sapporo. Total odometer count: 1572.1km.
- July 19th -
Finally I visit the big city Sapporo. However, during the 200 journey there I passed Abuta, a city that experienced Mt. Usu's eruption April / May of 2000. Steam still rices from the mountain, and it has became a tourist spot. Sapporo was actually less interesting to me (maybe I am aversive to big cities), but I did experience some excellent Ramen.
After a total count of 1804.3km, I got on a plane and headed back to Tokyo, making it home just about two minutes before the clock ticked to today.
Throughout the ten days I took over 1,300 pictures that's only taking maybe 1.5GB of space. While I had to empty my 256MB card several times over for this, I have no idea why people would ever, ever fill their 4GB cards (yes I know, RAW takes quite a bit more space, but all the pictures I produced in two years doesn't even make it to 3GB stored as JPEG! suddenly 4GB is a *lot* of space.)
Before going on ranting about my own trip, some news I probably should write down.
1) Niigata prefecture experienced some very serious rain while I was away, prompting flooding in some towns and villages. While most homes were not washed away, mud filled the said homes and one of the coworkers' was also affected - he went back to his hometown to dig mud out of his home. Everybody is sleeping in the city gym, from what I hear. Pretty awful stuff.
2) This area has been exceedingly hot, and another friend / coworker's home had a workshop in which some drilling oil combusted, burning her entire house down... She is off this week to take care of (or, be part of) that as well. It's simply terrible. She is the girl that takes Flamenco as a hobby, and it can be guessed that her expensive dress disappeared in that fire as well.
It seems that this is just the season for natural disasters... I hope that there isn't an earthquake in store for us (knock wood), seeing as that I am not covered by earthquake insurance...
Digital pictures (Score:1)
the 4GB flash cards are mostly for professionals, as their price proves (a 4GB CF is > $900 although you can grab 4GB microdrives for ~ $200 if you rip a Muvo2). As the memory would cost more than a P&S digital camera, your point is real. However, for professionals with 6MP+ cameras, taking RAW of ~6MB each, this is a good investment.
I dont remember the resolution of your camera, but with my 4MP, in RAW, i can fit ~350 pictures on my 1GB