This is a long one - sorry folks!
Two weeks we spent in Japan, solely in the Tokyo area, and me and Rio with colds that we picked up in China. They came on just after clearing Narita Airport's quantine area at which your surface temperature is measured with a thermal scanner as you pass through a certain gate. Saw as many or more people on the streets wearing surgical masks to prevent infection as in China - Gretchen observed that they are really only effective for an hour or two - good point to keep in mind! Now, miles away from any international airport, we see no masks.
Our time in Tokyo was spent in a hostel, JGH Hostel in fact, a real rabbit warren but really nice owners and managers. We were all in bunks in a room of 2 m length, 1 m wide, and 2.5 m high! See the picture above. After a week at JGH we went out to the countryside near Narita Airport to stay with Takashi Yamamoto (Yama) at his Narita Airport Hostel. Yama is a great guy full of knowledge about Japan and other countries to which he has travelled. For any travellers visiting the Tokyo area, this is a good place to stay with pretty easy bus and train service to Narita and Tokyo. Yama will lend you bicycles for tours in the countryside around his hostel. We visited the buddhist shrine in Narita, which was still very busy with New Year's events (prayers and offerings for a new year of good luck and fortune), and the beach and coast (see pic above).
Now in New Zealand for three weeks almost now, we're in Twizel (pronounced with a hard I) just in the shadow of the Southern Alps and Aoraki/Mt. Cook. We found some more free camping and travelled up to Aoraki-Mt. Cook National Park to view the Tasman Glacier's snout. It was very cool - had been producing icebergs that were floating in the meltwater lake (Tasman) between the snout and the terminal moraine. Glacial landforms throughout this entire area are incredible.
Christchurch is a pretty neat city. It's still in earthquake recovery mode (the big quake - 7.1 - occurred last September) with many older structures, especially churches, surrounded by scaffolding and under repair. While there we got equipped for the rest of our camping and travels, and made an excellent contact for my research which we will follow up on when we return in a couple of weeks.
On our way to the South Island we had a great crossing of Coook Strait - with Hectors Dolphins, salmon farms, and crazy-bad logging seen in the Queen Charlotte Sound. We camped a couple of nights for free at a Department of Conservation site on Robin Hood Bay, then off through the rest of the awesome Marlborough region and down to Christchurch.
Our North Island activities after leaving Auckland where we bought a car in under 2 days (a 96 Ford Mondeo Wagon w/ just over 100,000 km for about $1,800 US) included 5 days on the Coromandel Peninsula not far from Aukland. Beautiful beaches, nice camping spot or two, and severe sunburn - really have to watch those UVs in NZ - they'll get you fast. We then spent 5 days in Hamilton visiting at the University of Waikato and the public library where Rio completed his final exams for his online courses. An old acquaintance of Dan's (Shively) from Oregon State University's Dept. of Fisheries and Wildlife, Dr. Brendan Hicks, was kind enough to help bring me more up to speed on the history and structure of New Zealand's trout management approach.
Well, librarian says it's time to go, so more later mates!
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