Dolphin TV marathon 
IMAGE: My best friend
Like the fabled city of Atlantis, Mikura-jima was thought to have been lost forever in the vastness of the ocean – swallowed up by a tempest so colossal that few survived to tell the tale of its coming. But one man did survive, and this is his story….
Right OK, it wasn’t all that dramatic. But 3 days of high winds have resulted in spate of ferry cancellation. Scores of disgruntled tourists – office workers from Tokyo mostly – were seen making frantic phone calls to their bosses on Monday morning explaining why they would not make it back to work on time. In fact, the town chartered a boat today to carry 100 people off the island to nearby Miyake so that they would have a better chance of catching the elusive ferry when it chugged by.
You can see where I am going with this…. No dolphin trips for 3 days! I have been sequestered away in my little room, sprawled out on a tatami mat with a TV remote control in hand. I was not watching the Japanese news. I was not watching the Iron Chef. I was not watching Matlock in Japanese. I was watching…. Dolphin TV. Yes, that exciting program where dolphins swim in front of the camera and it is your task to guess who they are? Is it # 404? Could it be #161? No you fool, it is #145! This game went on for many many many hours…. In the end, I processed a few more video tapes, and there is a chance I will have all the video logs completed by the time I leave. Tomorrow threatens to be a nice enough day to actually go out on the water, so I hope to land a trip. If so, it will be one of the last of the season. My wife is coming for a visit in a few days, so I will be off to the airport to pick her up. We’ll head back to Mikura for a few days – maybe squeeze in one more trip. Then I’ll pack up my gear and the season will be over!
It has all gone so fast! But being shackled to a TV for hours at a time tends to make the time fly by….
-Justin