Shipping Research Gear & Observing Closed Roads due to Ash
It will take a few days for my gear to get to Mie University but it is much easier than me trying to travel with three large cases of camera and snorkeling gear plus my personal gear through Tokyo to Mie by train. The train ride to Mie from Tokyo will be 3-4 hours with two changes. The ferry ride from Miyake to Tokyo is about 6 hours. Miyake Island is about 160 km south of Tokyo. I am staying in Ako on Miyake with the Yamamoto family. Mr. Yamamoto helped me ship my cases – I can and write read hiragana and katakana but cannot read or write most kanji. These are three of the written languages here in Japan. The other two are roomaji and English. After shipping my gear, we drove a bit to see the results of the ash clouds … a normally black beach was grey with soot and the road was closed. Still, there were no more eruptions today … maybe Oyama is finished? A few 'jishin' today but nothing large. Two of the neighboring islands (Kozushima and Niijima) were hit very hard and have massive amounts of structural damage. Will write more soon. And give you updates tomorrow on my field research efforts and other dolphin details. Cheers Kathleen P.S. The Yamamoto's have a web site with photos of the ash eruption clouds. The text is all in Japanese but the photos are still accessible. The address is: www.woody-house.com.