Bolish Web of the Odd: Around the world in 40 days!! Start

As the new year starts, I am continuing in the Amazing Race. I am truely on a "race around the world." On January 3rd, I left Colorado Springs. I flew to Dallas, TX, then to Narita, Japan. I will spend two weeks there in Yokosuka, then fly to Okinawa. From there, I will fly to Singapore by way of Tai Pei, Taiwan. After a week in Singapore, I will fly to Rome. After about two weeks in Naples, I will complete the trip around the world! The "race" is whether I can been Neetu... she is flying around the world at the same time, only in the opposite direction. She flew from DC to Newark, then to Singapore direct. I believe her return is Singapore to Korea then back to DC.

The first week in Japan was about the same as always... lots of work. As was tradition, we took the new team members to a resturant that we call "Cook Yourself". It is a place where they bring a bucket of hot coals to the table and you cook your own food... the trick is not to actually get cooked in the process. The place is about 9000 degrees most of the time. On Saturday (6th), we took the new team members up to Kamakura and introducted them to the great buddah. Our new team members include Ahmed (who is trying to learn 1000 more Japanese characters so he can be "literate"), Katrina (a good friend of Gina from England), Brooke (a recent McLean to San Francisco transplant), and Marcel (a former Air Force guy from Hawaii that can bench press a bus!) They are all getting used to the fun of Japan and are quickly getting up to speed.

One place that I'd eaten dessert before but never took a picture of was called "Ducky Duck." I liked the name and Ahmed wanted a picture... so, here it is! Also below is a picture from Yokosuka. We were walking to dinner one night and I saw this tower so I grabbed a quick picture with my phone. For those of you that missed it in action at Christmas, I bought a new phone in Singapore. It's the Nokia 6680. It is full of cool features... it has 2 cameras (of good quality), built in tools for office functions, and even software to remote control your computer for presentations. It's been a lot of fun! In fact, it also comes with blogger software... which I need to set up.

Well, I think that's about it for Yokosuka. I'm off to Okinawa in the morning!