Japan - Day 144

Apparently today was supposed to be the luckiest day of the century or something along those lines, being 7/7/7 n' all that jazz. ...I'm not normally an overtly superstitious person but today I did find myself coming across some particularly good luck... I was scheduled to teach Tarou, some of you may recognize that name from my last update - he's the little son of a bitch that I want to strangle. Anyways, that potential bad luck situation turned out well when he didn't bother to show up for class! That seriously made my day. I now believe in luck haha :P

Amy and I got back from our Okinawa vacation a week ago and have since returned to the proverbial grindstone. Okinawa was a pretty nice place I must say. We had great weather - you'll notice the lack of umbrellas in my pictures :) We had a great hotel - there were two pools, one with a slide (yes I went on it hehe), and we had surprisingly great food! The trip, was however, not without its drama...

On the first day we decided to take the 70 km trip (or two hours by the Japanese speed limit) up to Churaumi Aquarium. Rumor had it that it was one of the biggest or nicest in all of Japan (I forget which one now). Along the way we stopped at Nago Pineapple Park and got a little tour of a pineapple farm in a golf cart disguised as, you guessed it, a pineapple. Interesting fact: Pineapples don't grow on trees - who knew? We also got to sample some pineapple wine - tastes as good as it sounds (read: bad). After that we continued on our journey to the aquarium.

We made it to the aquarium with only making one wrong turn (GPS is amazing!) and all was about to end well when I had to try and find a parking spot... So we're in the parking garage and I'm trying to edge my way into a tight spot between a wall and another car when I got distracted... Long story short, I kinda "bumped" into the pillar that juts out before the wall :( At first we were gonna call the car rental agency and lie about it, saying that someone must've backed into the car while we were inside. But then we realized that we'd need a police report - and while I'm not above telling a little white lie to the rental agency to save my ass, I definitely didn't want to risk deportation or something drastic by lying to the police! In the end I came clean and it only cost me 20,000 yen to cover repairs (About $175 CDN). Could've been a lot worse!

In other dramatic news, Amy ended up coming home with first degree burns on her arms and I'm pretty sure a concussion. Although the concussion wasn't actually diagnosed. As I mentioned earlier, we had great weather in Okinawa, so great in fact that it was about 90 degrees (so, maybe, a little on the hot side. Maybe). We went tanning on the second day and Amy was out there a little while longer than I was and ended up getting really burnt.

Not realizing how bad it was, on the third day we went out for some fun on the open ocean. I went parasailing (woot!) and we both went seadooing, neither of which were helpful to her skin to say the least. By our last day things took a turn for the worse and I ended up having to drive Amy to the hospital at 7:00 AM after she passed out in the bathroom hitting her head on the porcelain counter (where I think the concussion came in). Luckily they were able to bandage her up there and we were able to catch our flight home.

Since then Amy has started to recover (multiple hospital visits and medical bills later...)

All in all I'd say it was a good vacation - definitely one to remember! Amy will agree with me on that part :P

I thought that after my vacation I'd return to work feeling relaxed and refreshed. I couldn't have been more wrong. I've never dreaded going into work so much in my entire life! (I know, I know, woe is me). But I've gotten over it and back into the swing of the day to day monotony. I also put in my transfer request to be moved up to Tokyo! It's already been approved the question now is when will I be going...? That I don't know. I'll keep you posted!