you speak rerry grud engrish

Well, we left our hotel in Nagoya to go to Toba, which is a little bit to the south of Nagoya. There we got off the train and took a tour of the Mikimoto Pearl factory, which was a cultural experience...

We saw the Ama, who are female divers that do the breath diving for oysters. They wear all white dresses and this large single piece face plate/mask, and have a bucket with a rope. Interestingly enough, while the japanese here say that the white is to repel sharks, I distinctly remember a man in Belieze saying that you were supposed to wear anything but white because that:s the color that the fish flash that gets the sharks excited... but no attacks on the young ladies who were demonstrating for us. We then went through the museum and learned the process of making pearls, which is basically cutting out the (nearl?) organs and planting that and a shell piece from a mississippi freshwater clam into the gonads of a mother oyster, which causes the pearl to replicate the coating across the shell piece and produces a pearl. We bought some items and headed on our way to the hotel. Dinner was uneventful, other than a clear demonstration that I'm much more adjusted to japanese food than the rest of my family is (mmm, hand me that shashima... yes mom, it does look like they just caught it), and then off to bed.

The next morning (this morning) we went to the Grand Shinto temple at Ise, or the Ise-jima. There we toured the shrines (well, the outside at least, the shinto japanese lay persons are not allowed inside, makes you wonder if all of the artifacts that they claim are there are really there...) and a fairly strange old man took us under his wing as our guide. He tried initially to speak in english, but his ability was fairly limited so I ended up taking over in japanese. The people here are opening up to us more, and we provide english practice daily with strangers now. I got a fair amount of japanese in in that conversation, something that I had not had a chance to do as of yet. Nothing else eventful happened, besides discovering that we:d walked almost 3.5K in the wealtering midday sun when we were too stubborn to take a cab. Ah well. One more night in Nagoya and then off to bigger and better. Feeling better spiritually after such an adventure, the Ise-Jima was very asthetic. unagi ga suki janaidesukara, kekko desu= I don't like unagi, so no thanks.