Come Back Su-Su-Soon, Ya Hear!!

Ah, for all of you that really know me, you know I really like sushi! Well, I have died and gone to sushi heaven because I was introduced to quite possibly the best sushi I have ever had. When we first came to the island, about a week after we arrived, our friends took us to a little place called Su-Su-Soon. It's a little tiny kind of mom and pop-style dinner place where the presentation is beautiful, the atmosphere is casual and relaxed, and the food is out of this world good.

It's hard to tell from the pic I took inside the resturant because we were in the back room and my pic is full of Sam's kneecap, but the place is like sitting in someone's cozy little dining room while you look into their tiny kitchen while they are making your food. It's fantastic. When you walk in the door you put your shoes in the big white cubby and they give you these Moroccan leather slippers to wear. Very cools!!

We sat in the back at a traditional Japanese dining table, which means is basically like sitting at a huge coffee table and you sit on little coushins. Poor Mike can't sit and physically cross his legs to fit under the table like the rest of us, so we had to stick him on the end where he could put his poor legs out straight under the table, and he was sticking out from two sides and looked so uncomfortable, but once the food arrives you are in such bliss you could be sitting on nails and really wouldn't care.

The first plate was mine, I had a "big" shrimp tempura roll and a "BLT" roll. Yeah that's right, there was actually bacon, lettuce, and tomato in my roll. The crazy thing is they use cooked salt pork for their bacon. It sounds gross, but it's like melt in your mouth good. The other roll I had was called big because literally its like as big around as a tube of cookie dough, maybe even bigger. A-MAZ-ING! They give you this water too that has herbs in it, so there's lemon grass knots and mint, and it just gives the water a hint of yummy-ness, and they even make their own ginger-ale. It's very ginger-ish, but so yummy.

Mike plate was next. He had a small cucumber roll, a spicey tuna roll, and an Arare roll, which is the one that had the crispy looking little bits on the outside of it. It had squid, octopus, and shrimp in it so I wasn't a total fan, but once I dissected it and just left the shrimp in it, it was quite delicious.

I promise if anyone comes to visit me, this is definately going to be one of the places you go because if you don't, you're missing out on one of the best sushi experiences on the island. Plus, they do have other things besides sushi...

Japan-a-random

Yay for random pictures! I know this post really has no point, but I have some fun pics and I wanted to share them...

First up is quite possibly the best coffee on the island. Down by the Sea Wall there is this little place Coffee Casa where the food and the coffee are out of this world. This is an iced banana mocha and it's rediculous. They make their own whipped cream and it's like cool-whip tasting but thick enough to morter a house with. Freakin' fabulous! They also make all their own breakfast/lunch menu from scratch every day. This one place is more than enough of a reason to come visit the island.

Next is just a random guy who was on a motorcycle next to my car. Through my window I could see the back of his helmet said "Pansy" and it was too funny not to take a picture of. In this US, this guy woulda got made fun of so bad for being a "tough motorcycyle rider" with a helmet that called him a sissy, haha!

So the next pic is Sarah and Derek's new baby pug. Her name is still being debated, but she goes as "Bean" for now. She's freakin' adorable and a little menace. She's in the "I want to eat everything" phase... totally adorable.

Next is this random cut-out in front of an ice cream place out at Maeda Point's little rest area place. I thought it was funny because this little cut out can't be any more that about 3 feet high and the poor little cow looks like it's all boobs!! Ah, yet another reason I love the Japanese.

Last, something you don't get to see every day in the states. There was this little flat-bed truck, unfortunately in front of me, and it had two cars stacked one on the other. These cars were barely hanging onto the ends of the truck and the "rope" holding them on wasn't even tight. It was amazing. I was a little nervous being behind them on the hills!! The car on top was leaning back and forth on the bottom car. It was nuts!!

Ok, so that's all I have for now. I know they are stupid pics, but I thought I was share for the fun of it. Plus, who doesn't like pics of cute puppies, right??

Life is Scuba-dooba-tastic!!

Ah, life in Oki is fantastic, on land AND under the sea. As you all know, Mike and I finally finished our two Scuba courses... sorta. Last Sunday we completed our Basic Open Water course which allows us to, I guess you can say legally, Scuba up to a depth of 60 feet!! Yay for that. It took almost 10 hours in the pool practicing skills, about 15 class hours and 6 tests, and 5 open water ocean dives over the cours of two days, but we passed with flying colors!

We liked Scuba so much and had such an awesome time with our Instructors Dave and Tim, we immediately signed up to take the advanced class with them. Basic class ended Sunday at 2ish, then we went for a quick dive off the sea wall with time at the Bird Cage, then we went back to the Marina to start our advanced class with Dave that afternoon! Yeah, it's addictive. We'd only been in the ocean one day when we dropped like 3K into all of our own gear. It costed us a small fortune, but we have all of our own very very nice gear so we don't have to rent the crappy stuff from the Scuba Locker. Mike is all pink and black, haha. Mike went with the red, black and neon yellow stuff. He's very easy to pick out under water, needless to say, with all that neon yellow!!

Ok, so first picture up for discussion is our poor shower room, or the "Scuba Room" as it's been named at our house. We hang our wetsuits in there, our regulator hoses, snorkels, masks, fins, boots, gloves, BCD (bouyancy vests), all our weights are hanging out on the edge of the tub, along with our rash guards. They are those nifty red and white looking shirts in there. They have the protection of wearing SPF 50, so you can stay cool but keep out of the sun during your surface breaks. It's amazing how burned you get here even after an hour in the haze. Poor Mike got fried Memorial weekend when he wasn't wearing one, and I got crispy last weekend when I was cold and took mine off to warm up... oops!

Next pic is Mike, obviously. Sorry the pic is on it's side, I couldn't figure out how to rotate it. This was on the last day of our open water dive. Mike, myself and 4 others out of the 12 of us had finished all our skills the previous day, so this day we got to swim and fart around and take pics with the instructor assistant Tim! It was a ton of fun, minus the huge sea snake that took an interest in our group! They are super poisonous and very curious about divers, but hardly ever bite... thank GOD!

Next is Mike and I at the North Steps on our last day of class. It's hard to time pics underwater so that bubbles don't get in your face... the biggest and most important rule about diving is your not supposed to hold your breath, even for pictures because it can cause lung damage, or so we were told, so neither of us dared to tempt fate on our second dive...

Next is Mike and I at the "Bird Cage." Under water this structure looks like a gazeebo that is left with just a metal frame or something, making it looks like a huge bird cage under water, but in reality it was a structure left behind from the old water treatment plant in Oki. The site we were diving was right across the street from the new water treatment facility, but the cage was left behind from the old one. Apparently, it was some type of structure that held a huge pipe that either did water intake or an outlet... I'm not sure, but it was quite impressive under water and you could swim all around and through it. Very entertaining for newbies like us! Oh yeah, note all the bubbles in my face from Mike below me... silly boy hogging all the spotlight!!

Last pic up is me! It looks like I have my hands up in a "Stop, don't come any closer" pose, but in reality I was giving peace signs with both of my hands. The Japanese are very big in posing for all their pictures giving the peace sign... I dunno. I just did it to be cool, I guess.

So yeah, that's it for underwater pics so far. I think I may invest in a new case for my sony camera some time this week so I can snap some pics of mike and I and all the awesome fish we get to see. It's a couple hundred buck and I am too impatient to see if Santa will bring me one. Plus, it will provide endless posts for all you hard-core fans (yeah, that shout out goes to Debbie and all her awesome co-workers, and Sarah R. for being such avid readers and making me feel like this blog provides some purpose!).

More to come soon!!

Sorry to all my followers... all 7 of you!

Ok, I have been seriously slacking on my blogging duties lately, and I apologize profusely. In my defense, we've had a busy couple of weeks with our stuff finally arriving and SCUBA class. On a brighter note, due to those happenings, I do have some good pics to share. Coming soon will be pics of our house full of boxes when the movers arrived (I included one as a little teaser up above), followed by pics of SCUBA stuff, our equipment, where we dove, and hopefully some underwater pics of Mike, myself, and our class out at Meada (pronounced Mi-duh) Point. Our assistant divemaster Tim took a bunch of pics underwater with his digita and will be putting them on Picasa, so we'll have those to show off. And as soon as someone wants to buy me the $200 Marine Pack for my sony cybershot, we'll have even more pics to share, wink wink ;-) That's all for now but I promise I will be getting those pics up soon!!

Pamper thy fanny!

I don't know why I am putting this on the site, but I just love Japanese potties. I was at a little store called Nitori this past weekend, which is kind of like a very small version of bed, bath, and beyond, and I had to pee... alas, I found the potty. When I sat, I instantly got a hot flash! They super-heat their toilet seats in most public places! They have these nifty little cover attachments that you can add onto your basic toilet to make it into super-potty! You can make it into a bidet, a light splashing, or if you are embarassed about various potty-type noises, you can fake-flush and adjust the sound to make it louder if needed, hehe... I love this country!

My black thumb's turning green, finally!

Yeah, so these are my flowers. If you know anything about me, you know I kill all that is living within a 100 foot radius of myself. So to have plants actually flourishing around me is a small miracle. I don't know what any of the flowers on my porch are called except the Hibiscus, which seem to flourish on the island so I thought they stood a pretty good chance with me. So anyway, in the little pots I have some herbs growing; there's mint in green, basil in blue, parsley in pink, and lemon grass in the purple... we shall see how those go...

Holy Toe!!

Ah, the first sacrifice to the moving gods... poor Mike. He was carrying the heavy base for our patio umbrella and Charlie slipped past him out the door and out to the yard. In his hurry to get him back, he dropped the heavy box right on his poor big toe. I thought he was kinda milking how bad he hurt it that night because it wasn't red or anything, but the next morning when he woke up, it started to turn a bit raspberry colored, then as the days progressed, it has turned a bit purple, black, and green... The bottom two pics are from the second day, and the rest are from last night... I kinda feel badly I called him a wuss and to suck it up!