My Summer Vacation
Part 1: Mie

The long-haul of my summer's travels are behind me, I can now take a little time to contemplate and expound on those adventures.

I'll start with the the trip to Mie (pronounced mee-ay). Or maybe it was Ise, I'm not 100% on where exactly we were. In any event, I went with a group of Japanese friends to a nice cottage near the beach.

Sea-side life in Japan seems great, I could totally see myself retiring there. Just find a small town cut into the side of a mountain and spend every day in the water. I would, of course, need high-speed net access and a sweet computer, but the rest is somewhat superfluous. In any event, I have finally come understand the ocean's bounty. While at these beaches, you can walk out into the water, pluck up some shellfish, bring 'em home, and grill 'em up. We even ate some of them still alive! Just pull these little half-clam-shell looking things off a rock, rinse them in the water and you're good to go. I'm dreaming of being some leather-skinned sea-faring old-timer swimming out for my dinner every day. Except in winter, I guess I'd have to find someplace warmer.

The last day there, we went to Parque Espana (with a tilde above the 'n'). Another wonderful relic of the bubble economy, when Japan had more money than it knew what to do with, they built theme parks like the US built nukes. Although this one is still in pretty decent shape, not nearly as crumbled as some others I've seen. They have a brutally awesome roller coaster too, well worth the cost of admission. It's got this wierd Spain theme, something about Don Quixote, but a cutesy, kiddy-cartoon version. And Doraemon stuff too. I was impressed with the food; it wasn't great, but they did offer squid ink sauce on the seafood paella, a first for me.

And it was off to Thailand the next day!