Hey so I haven't posted here in a little while.
Last weekend I climbed Takao-san (they use post-nominal honorifics here for mountains). It was pretty exciting and harrowing at times. I forgot my camera though (lame) but a friend of mine who is a much better photographer put a bunch up on flickr, which I will put up here when I get back.
Get back from where, you ask? I'm heading to Ishigaki-jima, an island in the Ryukyu archipelago south of Japan (way, way south, about as far south as you can go and still be in Japan). The latitude is about the same as the Bahamas, and so we're going there mostly for snorkeling, rainforesting, beaching, diving, etc. Should be a good time. Unfortunately we're camping, and the Ishigaki camping season doesn't start until April 1st (so we can't get a permit).
This doesn't seem to faze my intrepid fellow-adventurers, who are more than happy to skirt the law in order to full experience this tropical getaway.
Two quick things.
One, this place has coconut crabs. To quote Wikipedia: "The coconut crab, Birgus latro, is the largest land-living arthropod in the world, and is probably at the upper limit of how big terrestrial animals with exoskeletons can become in today's atmosphere."
...
"Reports about the size of Birgus latro vary, but most references give a body length of up to 40 cm (16 in)[13], a weight of up to 4.1 kg (9.0 lb), and a leg span of more than 0.91 m (3.0 ft)[14], with males generally being larger than females. There have been reports in the literature of specimens measuring 6 feet (1.8 m) across the thorax and weighing 30 pounds (14 kg).[15][16] They can live more than 30 years [14]."
They also look like the guard the beaches of hell itself.
Here is a pretty picture of the beach near the place we'll be unlawfully camping:
pretty.
See you all on the flip side. I'm catching a flight out of Tokyo early, early tomorrow morning, so I'm staying in a capsule hotel tonight. I'm going full-on Japanese style accommodations for this trip.
Last weekend I climbed Takao-san (they use post-nominal honorifics here for mountains). It was pretty exciting and harrowing at times. I forgot my camera though (lame) but a friend of mine who is a much better photographer put a bunch up on flickr, which I will put up here when I get back.
Get back from where, you ask? I'm heading to Ishigaki-jima, an island in the Ryukyu archipelago south of Japan (way, way south, about as far south as you can go and still be in Japan). The latitude is about the same as the Bahamas, and so we're going there mostly for snorkeling, rainforesting, beaching, diving, etc. Should be a good time. Unfortunately we're camping, and the Ishigaki camping season doesn't start until April 1st (so we can't get a permit).
This doesn't seem to faze my intrepid fellow-adventurers, who are more than happy to skirt the law in order to full experience this tropical getaway.
Two quick things.
One, this place has coconut crabs. To quote Wikipedia: "The coconut crab, Birgus latro, is the largest land-living arthropod in the world, and is probably at the upper limit of how big terrestrial animals with exoskeletons can become in today's atmosphere."
...
"Reports about the size of Birgus latro vary, but most references give a body length of up to 40 cm (16 in)[13], a weight of up to 4.1 kg (9.0 lb), and a leg span of more than 0.91 m (3.0 ft)[14], with males generally being larger than females. There have been reports in the literature of specimens measuring 6 feet (1.8 m) across the thorax and weighing 30 pounds (14 kg).[15][16] They can live more than 30 years [14]."
They also look like the guard the beaches of hell itself.
Here is a pretty picture of the beach near the place we'll be unlawfully camping:
pretty.
See you all on the flip side. I'm catching a flight out of Tokyo early, early tomorrow morning, so I'm staying in a capsule hotel tonight. I'm going full-on Japanese style accommodations for this trip.