Going to Japan reawakened one of my guilty pleasures in life - road signs. I know, I know, most of you were thinking "sushi" or "bowing" or "weird toilets", but seriously, if you ever stop to look at what people put out there to get their point across you gotta wonder: "What were they thinking?!?" Like how in Canada there can be a maximum of 90 trucks falling from the sky at any given moment:
Watch your head!

Or how it's illegal to have any fun at all in Yellowstone Park:


And that for some strange reason there is a clown juggling while riding a unicycle over rough terrain ahead:


But the pikachu-factor and English translations put Japan's signs over the top!
This sign is right in front of a parking stall, I think it is advising you not to ram your car into a wall after being rear-ended:


One thing I learned, in case of any Emergency: Flee Left!


What a frog, elephant, or family of turtles have to do with road construction I have absolutely no idea, but I guess they get the point across...










And if you fall in the shark tank, flee right! (look at the back wall)

(that is if you remember where that is while being eaten by sharks)

Pictured below is an actual toilet. Instructions on the water tank, but only in Japanese...

Subliminal message - "Don't use this thing you crazy American! If you do people might think it's 'normal' and we're trying to get rid of these things!!!!"

Interesting storefronts.


And before you leave, be sure to check with accounting.

Japanese accountants make minimum wage. Best to stay in America, Matt.

Japan Again!

So, we've been home for a week now, and we're finally over the jet-lag so I could sit down and coherently post some highlights from our amazing trip to Okinawa. We went to an aquarium, a castle, saw some traditional performances, hung out at the beach, hiked to a waterfall, went snorkeling (where we were almost attacked by an eel), jet-skied, went to a cheesy Japanese 4-D movie, went to a Sushi-go-round (where we ate an eel) (delicious), and had an all-around good time with Randy, Mel, Marcus, and Ethan (My brother and his family, no eels there). To anyone considering a trip to the other side of the world, Tiff and I both give it an enthusiastic thumbs up! (but stay for more than six days) It was awesome! I've got a few more pics of our adventure I want to post, but it gets kind of tedious, so these will do for now. Thanks again Randy and Mel!!!

Japanese Aquarium

One of the first things we did in Japan was to go to this awesome aquarium. We saw a dolphin show from the "splash zone" (they gave us towels to dry off afterwards - I can't believe how nice the Okinawans were), sea turtles - both large and small (too bad they weren't in the dolphin show - sea turtles jumping out of the water spinning would be awesome!), touched a sea cucumber and blue starfish, and ate lunch basking in the view of a whale shark and giant manta rays. To be honest, the food wasn't that great, but the ambiance was to die for.









These are the sea turtles. Fun fact: you can tell a male sea turtle from a female by the size of their tail.

Here are some highlights of the dolphin show, it was pretty cool, and being so close we were able to look into the eyes of the dolphins... It kind of looked like it wanted to eat me if it could only get close enough. Moral of the story - never trust a "flippin" dolphin.







































Cool starfishes and a squishy sea-cucumber (we saw these everywhere when we went snorkeling)



This last Pic is Tiff and I doing our best hermit crab. Pretty good don't ya think? They had all of these marine animals made with flowers, which was interesting. Also, Randy and I had a lively debate about the species of marine mammal that looks like it wants eat me (the big one) I thought it was a big species of dolphin, Randy a small species of whale. Anybody know a marine biologist?

JAPAN!

We just got back from an awesome trip to Japan! It was full of sushi (I'm coming around to it, Tiff tried the octopus), tropical beaches (snorkeling off the reef of the East China Sea was one of the coolest things I've done, ever), and driving on the left hand side of the road! Tiff learned to say "please" and I learned "thank you very much", so between the two of us hopefully we didn't offend too may people. And to top it all off, our hosts were amazing, Thanks Randy & Mel! However, now we're adjusting to the time change after a night in the Tokyo airport and experiencing two nights in one day, so the blog will be updated with our sordid adventures in Japan when we wake up. Konnichiwa!