Kumejima has really big spiders

Gina and I flew to Kumejima, a small island that’s about a 25 minute flight away to the west of Okinawa. Our Japanese language teacher grew up there and we decided to go visit. It takes about 45 minutes to drive all the way around it at 25 mph and only 10,000 people live there. To say this place is laid back is an understatement. Farming and scuba tourism appear to be the primary industries. There is likely some healthy amounts of fishing happening as well. This morning, we hiked to some waterfalls that flow up when the wind blows. There wasn’t enough water to really get the effect today, but there were some really big banana spiders there. This one pictured was about 10 inches from end to end. Each square in his web was about 1/2 an inch to give you some perspective. His web was about 6 – 8 feet in diameter and would move back and forth some 2 – 3 feet in the wind. This made it challenging to get a picture and also made him float uncomfortably near my camera a couple of times. We had to be careful of a few of his brother’s webs on the walk in and out of the observation area from the parking lot. I’ll have many more cool pictures and details later. Enjoy this one for now:

Really big banana spider

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Snorkeling at Okuma

Gina and I were invited for a weekend at Okuma with a friends of ours. Steve and I rode the 50 miles up to the Okuma Resort (run by the Air Force for DoD personel) while his wife and Gina drove up. Steve and I rode long rides of 40 – 60 miles every morning and Gina and I explored some snorkeling just off of one of the two beautiful beaches there.

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Lot’s of interesting pictures

I’ve taken a lot of pictures with my iPhone that I thought would be interesting to blog about but have negelected to get them on to the blog. So, I have a collection of several photos dating back to last November that I’ll post here and give you a caption for each one. Enjoy.

Is it a lime (the peel is green) or an orange?

An Okinawan coffee farm

Another shot of the farm

The whole family at the coffee farm

My band marches in the international day parade

Our banner in the parade

Jelly on your root beer float, anyone?

Check out the warning on the bottom

S C plays the saxophone in Vietnam

More Cambodia airport food choices

My mariachi guitarron debut!

A "Gina" sized couch

Seether in concert at Camp Schwab

Fish heads anyone?

Interesting combination of menu items at Tokyo airport

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Happy New Year!

Home at last! Our 10 day adventure to Vietnam and Cambodia is over but not forgotten. We saw amazing sights & culture during our visit and I will post a series of blog entries about specific parts of the trip as I find the time and energy. As they say though, a picture is worth a thousand words and I’ve pulled out the first 170 or so pictures that caught my eye of the approximately 4500 that I took on the trip to display on the website here. These are the pictures I’ve chosen for their artistic merit. I’ve got several others marked for inclusion into the blog as documentary photos at a future date. I’ve not done any work to these shots yet, so many of them will improve with some working of the levels, sharpening, cropping, straigtening, etc. For now though, they should give you some insight into the sights of Vietnam and Cambodia.

Please enjoy…(click here to get to the gallery)

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School’s Out! (I’m off to Vietnam)

I finished the last holiday season gig today at Bechtel Elementary School and I’m off to Vietnam and Cambodia for vacation for 10 days. I’ve been so slammed with the commitments of being a music teacher in December that I haven’t even had a chance to think about the upcoming trip. We had the usual assortment of pep band basketball gigs, plus a couple of jazz band gigs for Christmas Tree lighting ceremonies, then I helped a student jazz combo perform at the general’s house (twice). In the midst of all this, the choir department staged a Madrigal Dinner for three nights and I had students involved with that (the King’s Brass) and I ran the sound.

It’s been a busy month of gigging.

I intend to take A LOT of photos in Vietnam and at Ankgor Wat in Cambodia. I don’t know if I’ll have much Internet access while I’m gone, but I will do updates if I can while there.

Merry Christmas everybody! I hear the weather in most places back there is pretty intense. I don’t really miss the snow much yet. It’s 55 – 75 degrees here everyday.

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Let there be light

I missed updating the blog last week and I’m getting more and more busy with the Christmas rush of performances beginning so it’ll be difficult to keep up to date. Last night, the jazz band performed for a Christmas Tree Lighting festival at Camp Lester at the hospital and they did very, very well. The students presented themselves in a professional manner, looked good, and played much of the music to a very high degree as well.

Now we get into the thick of Madrigal Dinner rehearsals, a Santa Parade next weekend with another jazz band gig that night and a jazz combo at the General’s house the next afternoon. Then we have Madrigal Dinner three times the following weekend, and the Band Winter Concert the week after that. Finally, we perform at Bechtel Elementary the last day of school before Gina and I fly out to Vietnam for 10 days.

Thanksgiving morning I took this picture from our balcony. Truly amazing view here sometimes. Click on it to see a bigger version.

Let there be light

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