The Lovely Island of Kamigoto

T-diddy and I took the fast boat out of Kamigoto on Friday night to visit Vicky and Melissa. It was nice to see the island again and see the girls. It stayed cloudy, but it didn't rain, so we were able to get some sightseeing done. Here are some pictures of the weekend:

T-diddy and I on the way to a waterfall.

Tai Chi in front of the waterfall: Melissa, Vicky and ME!

On our way to the lighthouse, Tom and I found the world's oldest vending machine.

We found this very serious looking statue near a shrine at a spot overlooking Aokata, the town where Melissa and Vicky live. His enlightenment dot makes it look like he's got one serious unibrow.

Melissa and Vicky took us to an amazing izakaya for dinner. We ordered up some of that island-fresh sashimi. It was grub!
After dinner, we went to Maiko's restaurant for some drinks. Maiko is super fun and made us laugh all night long. It was hard to get a picture of her not making a face. Her specialty is a nose/mouth toothpick concoction.

The Maiko special. We all tried it. She's the only one who can really pull it off. For some reason, Maiko started calling me Ben half way through the night. We're not quite sure why. I'd met Maiko before, and she called me Dawn at the beginning of the night, but something got switched and before long we were all trying not to laugh every time she said it. We should have corrected her, but we didn't.

The last time I was out on Kamigoto, I took some "before" and "after" shots of people and posted them on my blog. Vicky remembered that I did that and we decided to take another set. The first face is, of course, the normal shot and the second is the strange one.

Maiko

Vicky

Melissa

Tom

On Sunday we met up with Carrie as well and did some more sightseeing before taking the boat back to Nagasaki. We saw another waterfall, saw an old banyan tree at a shrine, stopped in on some churches and hit the cake shop. All in all, it was a super Sunday.

It was nice being out on the islands. I'm taking Tom out to Ojika in July. I've written my friends and they are all looking forward to our visit. They are already planning a BBQ. I simply can not wait.