Good Bye Beans

Sigh. Chieko and I are at last back by ourselves, awaiting the resumption of normalcy with open arms. Not to say that I didn't thoroughly enjoy having my family around the last week. In fact there is nothing better. I am saying that it'll be nice to have all the hub-bub of the last week happily, successfully, in the past.

We spent about 7 hours on various trains today accompanying my family down to Osaka and back. They are currently somewhere over the Pacific Ocean; we are currently sitting around the kitchen table embracing mellowness. It was a wonderful week.

After my family entered the security checkpoint at the airport(that sounds a lot more hostile than it actually is), Chieko and I hopped on a bus to the observation deck. This was our first time to Kansai Airport. In general the airports in Japan have awesome observation decks that we lack in the U.S. You can actually get outside, close to the runway, so you can hear the engines and smell the jet fuel. I'm used to the deck at Narita Airport (in Tokyo), which is set up parallel to the runway so you get a nice view of planes both landing and taking off. Kansai is set up a bit differently. For one, you have to take a bus to a building away from the main terminal if you want to watch jets. It's a bit of a pain in the ass, but it's set up at the end of runway, which has the potential to be very cool. However on this night, planes were taking off directly over us, which was good, but it sucked a bit since most of the activity involved landings while we were there, which happened at the opposite end of the runway (i.e. really far away). And I realize all this sounds totally boring if you don't have much interest in watching airplanes take off and land, which is probably the case with most of you.

So now I'll wow you with a cool picture of a jet taking off.

I've seen pictures like this before where the photographer leaves the shutter open for a while so whatever is moving in the picture gets all long and stringy, but I've never actually attempted one myself. As you can see, timing was an issue, but I still managed to get the effect. I especially like the fact that you can see the flashing red light from the wing. I really need to get myself a tripod, since with my new camera it's apparent that I can actually take decent pictures at night. I took this picture with my camera sitting on a bulkhead at the observation deck, which worked OK, but bulkheads aren't always there when you need them.

So, enough about taking pictures and airplanes and train rides and all that. I think it's high time I go to sleep for a good 24 hours. That probably won't happen, but I'm good for at least 12.