Feb 3 Nathan's Dent Dive

Our first dive in the new year! Gordon and Kay took us out with a couple who were visiting the Seerys (he is an ophthalmologist I work with). We enjoyed getting under the water again.

The coral is pretty neat here. This dive is near AWR (in the first pic you can see the towers behind the boat.)

Jan 21-27 Hawaii

I (Kristi) went to the Big Island for a week of continuing education put on by the school I graduated from. The classes were very helpful and I enjoyed the opportunity to get to know another island.

This is the City of Refuge where, if a person violated a kapu (law) and they could outrun their townsmen (and sometimes family) and made it to this place they would be forgiven and able to go home with no consequences. For example, a woman could be killed for eating a banana. If you violated a kapu it was believed that the gods would destroy the village or several villages so it was better to put you to death (the normal sentence for breaking a kapu was death). Pretty tough times, as some of the kapus you didn't have control over- like if you went fishing and happened to catch a fish that was pregnant. The wrath of the gods were felt by volcano eruptions, tsunamis, or typhoons.

Melissa (a classmate from optometry school) and her husband, Russ, were able to meet me out there. Unfortunately Max wasn't able to come, hopefully next time if I attend the same meeting.

The Hilton where the meetings were was HUGE! This and the next pic are from that hotel.

Melissa and I went snorkeling and saw an eel and 2 turtles!

The hotel were we stayed

A neat sunset from our porch

We went on a horse ride in this valley (Waipio valley).

It was great to get back on a horse again!

We also visited a park with a few waterfalls and neat trees.

This was on our "day off" of classes

Akaka Falls

The cauldra at the Volcano National Park. We ended up driving all the way around the

island on our day off- about 6.5 hours of driving.

Lava Tubes

Jan 18 A beautiful sunset across the street from our house!

Jan 12-17 Visit to Japan (2) City of Kyoto

Imperial Palace
All of the roofs are made of cyprus bark. They use small strips laid on top of each other, several inches thick. It's very resistant to the bugs and elements but needs to be replaced every 30 years. The problem is that at the Imperial Palace, it takes 25 years to replace all the roofs- so makes for a never-ending job!Several other places we visited also had this type of roof, keep an eye out for it.

The empress's gate. There were quite a few gates for certain people or classes of people.

Orange is a lucky color in Japan.

Nijo Castle

This castle has neat paintings inside (we couldn't take pics though) and floors that are made

to squeak, so that no one could sneak up on the shogun.

This picture is carvedout of 1 piece of wood that is about a foot thick and has the next picture

on the other side. Pretty neat!

The gardens

The view overlooking the castle and on to the city and mountains

Hike up a mountain to overlook Kyoto- it was great to get out into a true woods!

Some of the bigger bamboo we saw.

Nanzenji Temple

Patterned after the Roman aquaducts

Kiyomizu Temple

This temple is more popular to visit due to the view of the city and the many

cherry blossom trees planted below it. Too bad we missed the blossoms!

A market place that sells everything from ceramics to octopus tentacles!

A typical clean and narrow street in Kyoto. Thanks to Aiko's guidance we were able to

see more in less time due to cutting through the small streets.

A geisha wanna-be

It was neat to see another country that is so different from where we grew up.

The diversity of the world is amazing.

Thank you, Aiko, for taking all the time to be our guide and show us where you grew up.

Jan 12-17- Visit to Japan (1) Osaka, Nara, Uji

We met up with Aiko for 5 days in the Kyoto area. It was great to spend time with her and visit many of the sites. Japan is a very clean, polite country. All the streets and cars are kept in tip-top shape. There are also many temples and shrines. We visited 11 temples during our visit. Most of them were of one of the Buddist sects. Here's a snapshot of our time:

City of Osaka
Shitennoji Temple- the structure on the left is called a pagoda

Dragon well

Walking in Osaka

A seahorse made out of cabbages. This is the year of the dragon, I guess a seahorse is like a dragon?!

Osaka Castle in the background

View from Osaka Castle's upper floor

Another pic of Osaka Castle

Osaka Castle at dusk, with the wall and moat

City of Nara

We visited a large park with several temples and around 2,000 "tame" deer. Pretty neat

A 5-story pagoda

A mama and baby. The biggest adults' heads were up to our chests, not very big.

Very friendly though if you had food!

We thought it was funny they were hanging out at the ice cream shop!

There were rows and rows of these stone lanterns, and of course, deer near them.

Prayers on paper at one of the temples.

You can buy lanterns for different fortunes (from what we understand).

The temple of the big Budda, we didn't see the actual Budda though.

Aiko and Max feeding the deer, actually here, Aiko is trying to convince them that

she really doesn't have any more food! They didn't get the idea very quickly!

City of Uji

Koshoji Temple- one of our favorites. It is up the mountain some and is a quieter atmosphere.

A street in Uji, notice how clean everything is! and how narrow!

Green Tea bushes near Aiko's parents's house (where we stayed). Uji is known for their Green Tea.

Aiko and her parents at their home. We really appreciated their hospitality and

enjoyed getting to know the culture a bit more.