An Interesting Day

Mom and I were only in the car for a total of about 20-30 minutes on Wednesday. All we had to do was pick up my visa, and, after driving around the aquarium, Mom just decided to park back at the motel and have us walk. (The visa, by the way, is not a minute sticker, but a full passport-page-sized one. Also, the photo from Wolf Camera was reduced to a very low quality.)

The Georgia Aquarium is quite nice. They have everything from whale sharks to beluga whales to a fish thought to have been extinct for a long time. We got to touch small sharks (they weren’t very rough) and shrimp, but there were two much more notable happenings at the aquarium.

The first involved the belugas. There was an aquarium man standing by the tank giving info to the crowds about the whales, and he mentioned that this was mating season. Apparently, beluga mating behavior involves the male raking the female he fancies with his teeth. Well, sure enough, that happened, and then he…shall we say, exposed himself. The female apparently wasn’t in the mood, so he made a fool of himself for nothing.

The second interesting event was the whale shark feeding. Not only did we get to watch four 15’+ beasts open wide to consume in great quantities, we ended up sitting next to a biologist who was recording their feeding behavior. We got to learn a lot from this – for example, the whale shark tank is designed to hold six average-sized (36’) whale sharks; they mustn’t feed by swimming up to the surface, as the tank is too shallow for that; their esophagi are the size of quarters; and so on. I also learned something interesting from the man MC-ing the feeding: he claimed that only four other aquaria had whale sharks, and three of those are in Japan. Poor me.

There was another cool part of the exhibit in which they discussed how they got the sharks to the States. They used UPS. I kid you not.

When it came time for dinner, Mom and I perambulated awhile in the vicinity of our motel, seeing if we could find any places to eat other than the ones we had already seen. It turned out that we were staying near a police station. What was even stranger was the sight I saw not too far from the police station – a man in a white suit with what I remember (or want to remember) as a white umbrella walking towards and talking with another man with white clothes. I can’t prove he was a pimp, but… Also during that stroll, we learned (from enquiring about walking through an inter-building bridge) that a tornado had touched down in Atlanta earlier this year, causing some $250 M in damage.

The last thing Mom and I did that night was take a trip up to the 72^nd story of the Westin hotel (which had been hit by the aforementioned tornado). It was dusk, and I got a brilliant view of the city from the observation area above the rotating restaurant. (Yes, you just read that.) We didn’t eat there, but we did go up to the rotating cocktail lounge and have some drinks. Mine, as usual, were non-alcoholic. That’s about all we’ll ever get to do in that hotel, though – Mom looked, and the price to stay there Is expensive.

The final thing Mom and I did in Atlanta was visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial. We got souvenirs for my dad, and I got a textbook on the civil rights movement. We looked around some as well, and got to see his tomb.

I’ll be leaving for the beach tomorrow (Saturday) and will only have spotty internet access. After our week-long stay on Hatteras Island, there will only be two weeks before I go to Japan. No more blogs until just before leaving.

Japan Day

The trip to the Japanese consulate didn't go very well. What was supposed to take 10 minutes took an hour, due both to my poor navigation and to the ineptitude of our new GPS system when confronted with a complex interstate system. Eventually, we found the right address and discovered that (contrary to the picture on the consulate's website) the consulate was not in a colonial-style building, but a 20-story skyscraper.
Mom and I entered the building on the heels of a Japanese mother and her kids. (When the elevator started to move, albeit rapidly, the kids were startled.) To get into the consulate, we had to go through a metal detector and get our bags x-rayed - something I hadn't thought about, but which makes sense. It didn't take us long for us to get our business done - at least, not until we realized that the visa required a photo of me. (Just so you understand, I have distributed numerous photos to Japanese entities recently to get ready for this trip. I think everyone in the country will know me when I arrive.) This ended up delaying us, as we had to get a passport photo taken. Fortunately, there was a Wolf Camera near where we did some banking aftwerwards.
Following lunch at the Rock Bottom Brewery (a decent/good chain microbrewery and restaurant), Mom and I returned to the consulate offices on the 16th floor of One Alliance Center. There (as I had feared) I had to redo my visa application because it was too sloppy. Even when I redid it, I was told that it wasn't neat, but they took it, the photo, my passport, and my "Certificate of Eligibility" (a document required in order to apply for a visa, but which is also significant in and of itself). We'll pick up the passport tomorrow morning - probably, as Mom says, because of the time difference between here and Japan.
We ate dinner at a cool chain place called "Nakato." It had both a hibachi steakhouse area (think Kanki) and an area with traditional fare and a sushi bar, as well as private tatami rooms in the back. There was also a little garden to the side of the restaurant. Mom and I ordered a bunch of dishes a la carte, and, though I didn't like everything, there was some good stuff. (If you ever go to one of these places, have the gyoza.) Moreover, before the meal I asked a traditional dressed Japanese woman with a short haircut where the bathroom was in Japanese. When I returned to the table, she talked with my mom and I and forced me into using my meager Japanese skills - which actually was good; she's right that I need to practice. She also took us to see the tatami rooms after our meal (although we couldn't go in).
Tomorrow, as I said, Mom and I will pick up the passport. Then we'll go to the Georgia Aquarium, and...who knows what else. Dad wants something related to Martin Luther King, so we'll be doing something along those lines, too.

Coming Down to Atlanta

As I may have said earlier, the Japanese consulate for my area of the country is in Atlanta, GA. This is sort of weird for us, since the embassy in Washington, DC is slightly closer. In the grand scheme of things, though, it's good that I have to be down in Atlanta rather than in DC again. (I also got to get a look at some lake levels on the way here, and some appeared to be suffering from drought conditions.)
My mom found a Days Inn beforehand and drove the two of us here. We've got a cool view of the city through our balcony: skyscrapers with plenty of lights at night, a building where I can see into the rooms (not well, though, without glasses), and another with a giant "W" on it. (I don't know what this "W"stands for.) The neighborhood nearby is a bit questionable, but the solution to that is simply to not be out too late - and to watch out for the giant cockroaches near the storm drains.
Hopefully, Mom and I can get all of the visa/miscellaneous stuff squared away at the embassy tomorrow without any tasks spilling over into Tuesday. If that is the case, then we will be able to go to the Georgia Aquarium on Wednesday, which apparently is a big deal. (I love zoos and aquariums.) I'm not really going to have much time at home after this trip, though - we return Thursday, then leave for the beach on Saturday.
I'll post how the bureaucracy-navigating goes tomorrow.

P.S. The current dollar-yen exchange rate hovers around 108 yen to the dollar. I know that because of this little sidebar-thing on the family laptop (which I must use, as my computer is in the shop). There's also a clock that shows Japanese time, held by a mildly disturbing fuzzy pink thing with fangs. Clock-beastie aside, Windows Vista seems pretty cool, if only for these gimmicks.

Washington, Day 3

My final day in Washington was a bit hectic. There was some confusion about what the one other remaining house-guest, the host, and I would do that day. It turned out that the host's plans disintegrated, but I and the other guest didn't know this until later in the morning. The guest and I eventually went to the National Zoo without our host, who slept in.
I really pushed the limits on how much time I spent at the zoo (and didn't get a lot out of it). I definitely did not leave myself enough time to get to the airport two hours early, and I ended up in an insane rush to get to DCA. It all turned out fine, though - I had a decent amount of time in the waiting area before my flight boarded. Still, it gave my parents and I a scare.