Avoiding jellyfish and belting out Beyonce

Terribly sorry about the wait, more orienting, much socializing, and one karaoke filled evening. Though it is undeniably true that I can't carry a tune to save my life, one of my best moments in Kanazawa has got to be singing Beyonce's "Irreplaceable" with Luke, the 31 year old Australian who used to work for the Australian Department of Defence in Iraq. He was drunk, but I need no such assistance to make a fool of myself when there is pop music to be sung, and with 30 JETs all in a room with microphones, I was not the only one. The 3 of us who were left at 3:10 a.m. ended it on a good note with Taylor Swift's "Love Story". Who knew that my rather embarassing devotion to trashy Top 40 hits could actually shift the balance of cool in my favor? What a fantastic country.

As for the jellyfish, Kanazawa is delightfully located only a 17 minute train ride from a beach town called Uchinada where jet skis, bikinis, and techno djs abound... alas, the season for swimming will reach a swift end at the first jellyfish sighting. Thus far, no encounters with a "floating kleenex with motor skills", but we swim with caution. At night, after watching the sun set into the Sea of Japan, you can watch the squid boats come out. They appear as stars on the horizon, though the reality is somewhat less poetic. Each boat is equipped with a gigantic spotlight which they shine into the depths of the ocean. Masses of squid follow the beam up to the surface, in search of who knows what, perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel? Or maybe they just like shiny things. At any rate, the bubbling masses of squid are then netted out of the water to be skewed or filleted and eaten with rice... mmmm, delicious.










#1 Sparkly lights at the beach... maybe the squid are on to something...

#2 Dance party, though it didn't really get started until we hit the floor

#3 See! I don't spend all of my time watching my rice grow (it's doing nicely, in case you were wondering), this is me, Miki, and Melanie.

(Click on the photos to make them bigger, significantly bigger.)