Miller becomes Bowie

On my way to the U.S. for a visit with the fam-and-friends, I had the honor of escorting this little fella to his new and forever home.

Miller, a Cavalier King Charles (CKC), was down in the Ozato pound on the gas line in Okinawa when Doggies Inc. uploaded his pic to their site. A CKC lover noticed him and alerted a CKC fan club, which quickly mobilized to raise money to get him pulled from the center, vetted, fostered, and transported to the west coast for rehoming. All the fine details on the Japan side were carried out by Doggies.

When they posted that they were looking for transport, I immediately vounteered as I was planning to visit the States in a few weeks. Since his final destination was Seattle and mine was Portland, it was a fairly convenient arrangement and I called the airline (Delta) to book his passage.

Upon arrival at the airport, I met the lovely Lisa who had been fostering Miller until his departure. She helped me get him checked in and paid his transport fee.

Unfortunately, there was a snafu after I got to the boarding gate. Despite making my reservation for Miller weeks in advance, confirming it a few days in advance, and breezing through the check in process, it was discovered when trying to load Miller onto the plane that he was not actually allowed on the plane. A gate agent called me shortly before boarding to tell me we would not be allowed on the flight.

After some scrambling and confusion, we were rerouted through Minneapolis. The agent who had been dealing with my case gave me the gate number and told me to run, as boarding was in process. Nobody told me why we had been ejected.

Upon finally reaching Minneapolis, I encountered another roadblock when I couldn't find Miller in the baggage area. I asked a baggage clerk - he had no idea. Asked a Delta rep hanging around the area - she had no idea. Asked another baggage handler - no clue. Finally one of the immigration agents went to look for him and brought him out to me, then escorted me to the front of the line. I have to say that the immigration person was exceedingly kind.

Unfortunately, after all the rigamarole, there was not enough time to take Miller out of the airport, as it would have involved going out of security and then having to go through the whole process again to get back in. I had less than an hour to make my connection at this point. There is nowhere at MSP to take a dog to relieve himself during transit. Poor Miller had to endure another leg of the journey without leaving his crate. We had originally expected that he would be in the crate for 10-12 hours, as the flight from NRT to PDX is 9 hours. By the time we reached PDX, he had been enclosed for more than 20 hours.

But reach Portland we finally did, where his new mama was waiting. 

And his new siblings.

Miller's name is now Bowie, and he lives in Seattle. Yay Bowie!

Here's a video made by someone in the CKC group that helped raise money and spread the word.

Kisami Ohama, Shimoda

Gotta get away... summer is slipping by and the beach is calling!

Kisami Ohama, photo by Stacee

Lucky for us the summer lingers long in Kanto and it's possible to get in some sunbathing well into September.

photo by Stacee

We found a great rustic beach house five minutes from Kisami Ohama beach in Shimoda, called The Perch.

by Stacee!

Ohama is a beach known for its white sands and clear waters. Much prettier than anything in the immediate Tokyo vicinity!

A.S.

Chiro was in heaven - tons of fresh air, attention, walks, runs! She didn't like swimming though.

Yam-kun

Peetie on the left, Yamato on the right

My foster kitty Yamato passed away last night.

Yamato was a Fukushima kitty rescued last winter by Naoyuki Seki in Namie. He was very skinny and hungry. After a few weeks at the shelter, he came down to Tokyo for his neuter and ended up s...

taying with me. Relatively feral at first, he slowly over the months warmed up to us, though he was always very loving of his fellow felines in the house, Timothy and Peetie. In the last couple of months, I was able to pet him.

Yamato was diagnosed as FIV+ and in the last few weeks got very sick and stopped eating. Though he went to the vet several times and received daily syringe feeding and subcutaneous fluids at home for the last week, he was found to have FIP, a fatal disease with no proven cure.

He passed away at home, in our arms, with Peetie snuggled up next to him, purring and bathing him. I am relieved his suffering is over. I am so thankful for his companionship and growing trust over the past few months. Rest in peace, Yam-kun. Thanks for spending a little of your life with us. We love you.

We went on a boat.

It was a big boat, packed with revelers, dancing and decked out in yukata, and the spirits flowed freely.

Well, "spirits" is a tad generous. Sapporo beer and mango chu-his, more like.

My yukata got progressively sexy as the night wore on.

We cruised around the Tokyo Bay, under the Rainbow Bridge. Saw the city from the harbor, set back from all the twinkle lights.

Fun was had.

This seems like a good place to mention a few songs about boats that are kicking around in my head, that I love. I used to always always have a soundtrack playing in my head but nowadays the music has subsided somewhat. I'd say now it's more like half the time. I blame tech. I still love music but all the synching and uploading and downloading, it's exhausing.

If I Had a Boat
by Lyle Lovett

I Wanna Be a Boat
by Jawbreaker

ethiopian delish

Vegansaurus used my photo for one of their posts!

Mmmm Ethiopian food. I ate this with Cory.

Angel Auction at What the Dickens

The lovely folks at What the Dickens in Ebisu hosted our Angel Auction last weekend, where volunteers put their professional services up for bid. On the block were marital arts lessons, Indian cooking and piano lessons, a tour of the German embassy & meeting with the ambassador, and much more.

Photo by Jennifer Julien

WTD is a great spot even when they're not raising money for a cause, with free live music most nights. They also have nice food - in additon to the standard British pub fare like meat pies and fish & chips, they also have veggie offerings like a cheese & tomato sandwich, hummus, some kind of quiche, and other stuff that the chef dreams up. Plus the whole place is dark and woody with cozy corners and feels like something in Diagon Alley.

Noah Style

On our last day on the island, we had the rental til the mid afternoon and the flight took off in the early evening. Time for a shop and a stroll and a lingering lunch.

Noah Style is in a residental area near Shuri Castle, up a hill in a modest neighborhood. In fact, the cafe is a pretty converted house.

Inside, there is a tiny clothing store with things made from soft natural and organic cotton, and another area selling organic vegetables and other goodies like house-made sweets and enviromentally friendly laundry soap.

The menu offers a few carefully crafted options - soups, sandwiches, plate lunches chock full of color, and the daily special, which we got. It had 11 kinds of food, with brown rice and organic coffee. Such vegetables as beets, urizun-mame (winged beans), and hijiki seaweed. It was all followed with a tiny lovely sliver of cake made from brown sugar and nut butter.

N was inspired by this lunch and bought some kuruma-fu as soon as we got home and made a stunning dinner for us.

Out the back patio, we found several bedraggled bunnies hopping around the garden, and a large tortoise in repose under the deck.

A definite recommendation for people who love delicious wholesome food, lovingly prepared and artfully presented.

ahirihirihiri

On the last night in Oki we caught a festival at Yonabaru town - kind of a summer bon festival, but Okinawan style.

There was wrestling, there was cotton candy.

There was music and dancing, and drumming, and drum-dancing.

My friend S who grew up in Oki said we couldn't miss Eisa - a kind of drum-dancing found at local festivals.

I love the guy who runs around in face paint, looking scary and whistling and messing with the crowd.

I love the chiming in of the singers who sing ahirihiri on top of the main body of the song (these shots/catcalls are called kakegoe 掛け声). I was told it means "I like it like it."

Nakagusku

The Nakagusku castle ruins lie on the the east coast of the island, just south of Okinawa City.

The Ryukyuan castle, or gusuku, was built in the 15th century. Unlike Shuri-jo, with its gift shops and costumed staff and refreshment plaza,, Nakagusku is undeveloped, unpolished, and unbranded.

After paying admission at the small ticket booth near the grassy overgrown parking lot, we hiked up the hill to find the ruins, lonely for visitors, the enormous man made rock formations stark against the brilliant blue sky and expansive green.

Though I love the pageantry of Tsuruga-jo, the folk dance at Shuri-jo, the historical tour guide at Matsumoto-jo, and treading in sock feet on the time-polished wooden floorboards at Matsue-jo, there is something to be said for castle ruins left unadorned, unexplained, and largely unstaffed. The busy-ness of those castles is surely entertaining, but at Nakagusku it is only the crumbling foundation open to the sky.

There is a lot of space for the imagination there.