Whale Watching-Feb 12

I have to give you a bit of background before I get into the Whale Watching.  So, I was at the gym in September. I was getting ready to get on a machine and I hear, "Dr. Rotchford?"  I am not known by that here in Okinawa.  I am Mrs. Perez.  So I was taken a back.


I knew that I recognized the woman but I couldn't place which class.  After 20 years, you loose track. She said, "Abby Carmichael."  I couldn't believe it.  She was one of my first students in NC.  I would say going back to 2001.  She was also one of my favorites.


She was 18 years old back then. It was so nice to see her again.  We caught up and see each other at the gym several times a week.


No one in my family wanted to go Whale Watching because there lots of sea sick stories.  I knew it was worth it if you see some great whales.  Abby was all about it so we went this past Sunday. So great!


Here I am before we left.  OK, the story with my eye is that our last day in Sapporo, we are catching the bus to go back to the airport and Bill says, "Oh my God, honey, your eye!"  Well, I had to wait an hour until we got to the airport to see what happened.  I could see people staring.  It is pretty bad.  After five days, it hasn't changed much.  The doctor says it is a broken blood vessel and may take 2-4 weeks to clear. 


I couldn't even use the magic of Photoshop to doctor it out of my photo if I tried.  Got a lot those pesky crow's feet though!

Here we are before the trip.  nervous about getting sea sick but very excited.

 It takes about 25 minutes to get out to the area that the whales are.  The whales are off the Kerama Islands.  The Keramas have some of the best diving and snorkeling in the world.  The water is like drinking water.  Bill and I stayed at a hotel in the Keramas back in September 2010.  We had a great time snorkeling.
I learned from Whale Watching in Hawaii, that you look for the blow hole spray.  Literally, "there she blows."

Abby and I moved up to the front of the boat.  Only one other lady joined us.  It was very cloudy and a little windy but we wanted to get a good view.  Of course, in Japan, we had to take our shoes off to sit up on the front deck.

We spotted one really close by!

This is a good shot of the blow hole.

We realized that you get about 1 minute of great views, then you wait for about 10 minutes until you spot some whales.

Here we are waiting for some whales.  You can see it was quite cloudy, we almost expected rain.  But you will see it cleared up quite a bit and ended up being really nice.  We were lucky.

When a boat spots a whale, all of us go as fast we can and chase it.  It was kind of exciting when we heard the engine start up and we knew we were off to spot another group.  

As you can see the sun came out and it was beautiful.  By that time, everyone figured out that the best place to be was up where we were so we had to move over and share some space.  I didn't mind though because I already had great shot and I wanted to just watch the whales instead of photograph.  Also, the extra people were a great wind block.

Our last group of whales was really close by.

Here are some shots of the area.  Even if we didn't see any whales, it was a beautiful place for a boat trip.  We will go on a Kerama Islands Snorkeling excursion this summer.  It is just a quick day trip.

Another great day!!

Sapporo Ice Festival-February 6

I told you that we were going to the crab place for dinner.  That was my mission.  The northern area is known for King and Queen crab as they live in the cold waters there.  This time, Caroline stayed behind and Patrick joined us.


Everything on the menu is made from crab.  Carb tempura, steamed crab, crab innards (yes!) etc. You get the idea.  The funny thing is Bill does not eat seafood.  I just got him to eat some fish, sometimes.  He won't go near shellfish.


He bought rice from the local market and ate that while we feasted. 

It was a beautiful restaurant, traditional Japanese.  Tatami mats on the floor.  Take your shoes off.

I ordered the plum wine, very sweet.  Here, I am explaining the virtues of getting a second glass.  There was no photo trickery I could do to make myself look better.  Believe me, I tried!  I was really tired from walking all day in the cold.  But I was very happy.

Bill was tired too.  Maybe he was hungry...

Patrick's "set" came with a hotpot.  It is a soup that you cook at the table.

Patrick did not talk for 5 minutes because he was eating.  He has a great meal.

My dinner, Queen crab.  The top center is the "innards"  I passed, even after two glasses of wine!  I usually will try anything once, but I wasn't up to it that night.  I thought of my brother, Joe.

Patrick's set.  He said, "everything on my tray s made from crab.  Crab sushi rolls, crab leg, crab hot pot...Bill's crabby."  Funny.

Bill wanted to go for another walk after dinner.  It was a beautiful night but I went kicking and screaming.  I knew the sculptures would be lit up, but I was dragging.  Maybe all that rice gave him energy--Go Carbs!!

Bill was right the detail is much different at night. I saw much more depth to the sea sculpture than I did during the day.
I will just share a few shots.  It was about 9 p.m. and the festival was starting the next day.  It was mobbed, I will spare you those pictures.  I was glad to have the park to ourselves.

Just wanted to show the detail one this one.

The view from our hotel room.

I forgot to mention that Caroline and I were interviewed by the local television station on our first day here.  I forgot to have Bill take a picture of it!  It happened so fast and we had already been walking around for hours.  It was fun.  They were impressed with our Japanese.

Sapporo Ice Festival-February 5

We had a beautiful day today! It was sunny and warm, about 4 degrees.  Very dry so it did not feel too cold.  Thank goodness for the Marine Uniform Shop.  I bought all kinds of cold weather gear before the trip.  I got great hand and toes warmers so we were not cold at all.  

Sapporo is located in the northernmost prefecture of Japan, called Hokkaido.

We had about a 15 minute walk to the first site of the festival.  Actually, it does not officially open until tomorrow but we knew we would get a glimpse of the sculptures.  We had not seen snow in three years so it was exciting.  I have not seen this much snow since I left New York in 1998.

Patrick stayed behind and just relaxed today which was fine, a very relaxed vacation.

I was wondering how long it would be before someone got that "I am going to pelt you with a snowball" look in their eyes

Again, we have not seen snow in awhile so we stopped every 10 seconds to throw snowballs.

A view from the walk.

They are known for the crab in Northern Japan, so I decided that we are eating at this place tonight.  The crab actually moves around on the building.  In fact, as I write this, my gang are hungry and itching to eat.  I am the only seafood eater so, lots of luck because this is where we are going.

The smaller Susukino Festival is on the way to the larger one so we stopped and watched the ice carvers at work.

Here you can see how many sculptures are there.

The sculpture below is actually emerging from the pages of a story book.

The sculpture below is going to be an Ice Bar serving hot wine and cold beer for the festival.  They spent a lot of time with laying the ice bricks exactly perfect.

I thought the side street was interesting too.

We still had a bit of a walk to get to the big festival but luckily we walked underground through the large metro station.  Bill never, ever passes a bakery without going in.  The Japanese have great bakeries.  Not too sweet.  You won't too much in the sweet area, but much in the fresh area.  


Side note:  Dunkin' Donuts as a business failed in Japan and flourishes in the U.S.  It is too sweet for the Japanese.  Mr. Donut (who?) failed in the U.S. and flourishes here.  The donuts are not sweet at Mr. Donut.  Japanese will tell you that Dunkin Donuts is too sweet.
On a later post, I will explain the fascination with Kentucky Fried Chicken--everywhere....

They look sweet but are not really that sweet.  I have to say that the chocolate tastes like chocolate here.  In the U.S. it tastes more like a sugar taste.  The ice cream is very different.  Much more flavorful and less sugary tasting.  We do prefer the Japanese ice cream.

We settled on this one.  A huge Coffee Boss Cafe au Lait (our favorite) and a honey bread.

OK, so we made it to the large Ice Festival, in Japanese, "Yuki Matsui."

I don't need much description here so I will just show pictures as I normally do.  Remember that the festival doesn't start until tomorrow so we just are previewing.

The food was incredible...as always.

Japanese sweet potatoes...

Bill was telling me to stop taking pictures of the food and start taking pictures of the sculptures.

I loved this one, I thought of my sister Ruth.  She loves wildlife and sea turtles always make me think of her.

I will show some up close and some far away so you can see the scale of some of the sculptures.  Amazing.  We had a great day.

The whiskers on the sea lion and walrus were ice.

More food shots...

Check out the food on the menu...

These are the sea snails and huge clams.  I have to try this... Maybe tomorrow after some wine or local Sapporo beer.

There were many children, so cute.  The Japanese word for "cute" is "kowaii" but don't mispronounce when you tell someone their child is cute.  If say "kowai" that means "scary."  I am told that they are very forgiving, but I don't chance it.

Brrrr!!

This one honors the Japanese women's soccer team that just won the championship.

Every time that we thought we saw the most amazing sculpture, there was another one.

This boy posed for me.  

I think these guys just wanted Caroline's attention.  She does draw a lot of stares over here.  Very funny.

Since they were so nice and funny, I had to buy a chocolate covered banana.

I have NO IDEA what this next one is about...  We spent a lot of time laughing thinking about what my son Jerry would say (and do) with this one.  We miss you Jerry!

I love this one, again, I thought of my sister Ruth.  This is still in progress.  It will be great when finished.  I loved the theme, all of the woodland creatures gathering around the flower. I can't to see what it looks like tomorrow.

This one was massive.

Caroline found a snowboarding exhibition just before we left.

We had a light snowfall the last hour to make it go from perfect to **m*a*g*i*c*a*l** 
A great day!!