I meant to write this a few days ago, but got distracted. Here is the year’s, uh, yearly update before has now become the September 1 deadline.

In October 2023 I got my PADI Advanced Open Water license. I’m now certified to go down to 30 meters, or 100 feet. Found a place a few hours away that offers training in English, so I did that over three days. The area is Atami, which is about 45 minutes away from Tokyo Station by bullet train. I by now means consider myself advanced! It’s purely in title.

During the Japanese New Year break (お正月/年末年始) I took a trip to Oahu with my mom. During the summer between kindergarten and first grade, my mom, dad and I took a trip to Hawaii. I believe we visited the islands of Maui, Oahu and Kauai. I barely have any memory of the trip, and while I have been to Hawaii several times since then, it’s always been to the island of Maui.

But not this time! This time we went to Oahu, and only Oahu. And it was amazing. But before leaving, a coworker of mine who’s from Oahu gave me a list of places to check out for food. And with that info we had some great meals, did lots of walking up and down the strip of Waikiki, “hiked”/walked up Diamond Head, went to the North Shore and checked out the Polynesian Cultural Center, which had the best luau show I’ve been to. Highly recommended! And during my time at Waikiki, where we stayed in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, I ran into someone from my office! And offered impromptu interpreting for some Japanese tourists in the area. Oh, and did two dives.

Shortly after returning back to Japan, I decided it’d be good to buy my own boots, fins and dive computer. The computer is a fancy watch-like device that gives you all types of readings during your dive, and logs it as well. It’s basically required to have when you dive with any type of guided dive. Super helpful. Bought all this where I got my mask prior, a chain of stores in Japan called mic21.

Dropped a lot of money in one visit, but it’ll last me, hopefully, 10+ years. And the manager was super friendly and spoke great English.

Then in May (or was it June?) I decided I wanted to get the PADI Enriched Air Nitrox certification. This allows me to use a higher blend of oxygen, up to 40%. So I went back to mic21 and asked about the course, only to be told the store only offers trainings in Japanese. O_O After a little consultation, I decided to go for it. And three weeks later I took and passed the test.

Last month in July I took a trip back to Texas and spent two weeks visiting friends and family. And my first day there my amazing friend Amit took me to a concert featuring DJ Jazzy Jeff, Paula Abdul and New Kids on the Block. I was amazed at how many 40+ year old women were screaming at NKOTB when the group started to do shirtless hip thrusts midway through the performance.

Made a visit to KG BBQ in Austin, which was amazing. Also finally hit up Pinkerton’s Barbecue in Houston, which was equally amazing. And that one was pretty special because my first two friends ever I befriended at age 3, were there. Hadn’t seen them in probably 14 – 15 years.

Unlike previous visits, this was spent entirely in Texas. Prior I had to fly out to Florida to see my mom and my dad and stepmom. But by chance last year my mom moved to Alabama, and my dad and stepmom moved back to Texas in February. So why didn’t I visit Alabama? My mom spent much of the summer road tripping around the country, visiting sites like Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone. With a visit to Texas for me as well. =)

One of the things that I received from my dad was a box of six old VHS tapes so that I could digitize them. Five were from his time working in the Austin area when I was little, and then one from a road trip we took when he later lived in Washington state. They’ve been amazing to go through and see what my dad was like in a work environment. I’m so happy the tapes didn’t have any mold or damage.

I captured them using the RetroTink 5x, a device meant for upscaling old video game signals to HDMI, but also works really well to capture VHS tapes. And afterward I’ve been going through the video files, adjusting the audio levels and doing some basic color grading with DaVinci Resolve.

I’m always happy to arrive back in Japan. Back to where some friends are, where my things are, where my job is. Basically where my life is. But this time I was sad. It was the same sadness the felt the first time I visited Japan back in 2007 when I didn’t want to be back in the U.S. Maybe I should start thinking about moving back to Texas. Though I don’t think it’ll be for a few years still.

I’m sure the next post on here will be well before that happens!