{"id":271,"date":"2006-07-05T07:02:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-05T15:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/?p=271"},"modified":"2024-03-02T11:20:09","modified_gmt":"2024-03-02T18:20:09","slug":"mon-tues-and-wed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/?p=271","title":{"rendered":"Mon, Tues, and Wed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(Update<\/b><\/i>:\u00a0 I've uploaded Sasebo photos<\/a>) Monday was my first full day in Japan.\u00a0 We went to one of Joe & Gwyn's favorite local sushi places for lunch.\u00a0 It was one of those conveyor belt places where the sushi loops around the restaurant.\u00a0 One interesting twist was that each table had it's own hot water spigot for making your own tea.\u00a0 That afternoon Joe took me on a tour of his ship, the USS Essex.\u00a0 Although Joe is on vacation, nearby typhoon Ewiniar<\/a> means that Joe had to spend a bit of time at work that day.\u00a0 For dinner that night we went to a local kabob-type grill place.\u00a0 The owner was very friendly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, the weather has not been cooperating with my vacation plans.  It was cloudy and rainy both Monday and Tuesday.  For Tuesday we had hoped to do some local sightseeing in the hills, and also tour the 99 Islands<\/a>.  But rain put a damper on those plans.  Instead we went into the shopping district in downtown Sasebo.  For dinner that night we went to an Italian restaurant.  The Japanese version of Italian is interesting — for example, one of the pizzas available was tuna, corn, and mayo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to the trip, Joe & I decided to make a trip up to Seoul for a tour of the Korean DMZ<\/a>.  Next to Cuba, it's one of the last remaining pieces of the Cold War.  It makes even more sense considering the bad weather in Japan.  Rather than flying to Seoul, Joe suggested we take the Beetle hydrofoil<\/a> from Japan to Korea, then take the Korean bullet train<\/a> to Seoul.  So on Wed morning we headed up to Fukuoka to catch the Beetle. The hydrofoil rode more like an airplaine in light turbulence rather than a boat.  Although it lifts up out of the water at speed, the transistion is so smooth you can't even feel it.  The peak speed on the Beetle was 50 mph. The bullet train ride was also pretty cool.  Most of the ride was at around 80 mph, but on some of the longer straightaways we got up to 180 mph (300 km\/h).  It was a very smooth ride, although Joe said that the Japanese bullet train was even smoother.  The bullet train ride was surprisingly inexpensive — about $45 per person for the 2 1\/2 hour ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So tomorrow we see the DMZ, then head back to Japan on Friday.  Hopefully the weather in Japan will have improved a bit for the local sightseeing, and also a trip to visit nearby Nagasaki<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Update:\u00a0 I've uploaded Sasebo photos) Monday was my first full day in Japan.\u00a0 We went to one of Joe & Gwyn's favorite local sushi places for lunch.\u00a0 It was one of those conveyor belt places where the sushi loops around the restaurant.\u00a0 One interesting twist Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan2006"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1398,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions\/1398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}