Wednesday November 10,2003
The Internet Cafe - note the goose! |
[New
Jeff here. One year later when I
returned there was wifi everywhere!
Amazing how quickly things change!]
My flight arrived
shortly before 1:00am this morning. It was a long flight: first from Seattle to Tokyo,
then from Tokyo to Nagoya (in Japan) then on to Saipan.
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Summer Holiday Motel |
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Amelia Earhart - 1928 |
He along with some of the locals who had been forcibly conscripted by the Japanese during their occupation of the island had worked loading bombs onto B29's. One of those locals showed him a grave where he claimed the Japanese buried an American woman flyer who had been captured then executed - obviously Ameila Erhart! The local told my seat mate that he had been on burial duty that day. Nobody believed the old guy until recently, and now a team has been put together to dig up the grave and try to get a genetic sample. Evidentially the Mariana Government wasn't very supportive; but members of the team got the US State Department to put pressure on the Mariana's government to let them exhume the grave.
[New Jeff again: I followed
up on this story when I got home – it turned out that my seat mate’s memory was
a bit off and after searching for several days the team never found the
supposed grave.]
More next time, the smell of dog and geese here in the internet cafe is getting
to me.
Thursday November 11th
I woke up this morning around 6:00am (which would be about noon Vancouver time). My first order of business was to rent a car. The locals recommended Cars Unlimited, so off I went. They rented me a 1995 Nissan Sentra (which was the most modern car they had). It made the Corolla I rented last year in Rarotonga look like a 2004 Mercedes.
I was
also warned not to park the car in any 'bad places' as the car wasn't covered
for vandalism. I wanted to know if there was anything left on the car to vandalize?
If this car was left in the worse neighbourhood in Watts they'd actually put parts BACK
on it!! I was given a map to find my way back to my hotel and told it was
physically impossible to get lost.
I got lost.
Because it's a small Island, I eventually found my way back to my motel. (No,I did not go around the island twice!) Driving along the road I was overwhelmed by the amount of Poker Parlours and Pawnshops, which sort of makes sense in a weird sort of way.
I got lost.
Because it's a small Island, I eventually found my way back to my motel. (No,I did not go around the island twice!) Driving along the road I was overwhelmed by the amount of Poker Parlours and Pawnshops, which sort of makes sense in a weird sort of way.
Suicide Cliff |
”I can't get you all in the shot. Everyone take one step back.”
And who says the Japanese don't have a sense of humour?
Speaking of Japanese tours, they make up about 90% of the tourists to Saipan. It’s only about 4 hours from Japan – so they look at it as their Hawaii.
[New
Jeff again: “That suddenly
stopped the following year, when the
Saipan government gave an ultimatum to JAL to pay the highest landing rights in the
Pacific or have their landing rights revoked.
JAL told them to stick it and pulled out of Saipan. Now the Japanese only make up a small portion of the tourists. The Chinese have replaced them.]
The Last Command Post |
“No,” I
told him, “It’s an Israeli tank. They
were big during the Pacific War. Weren’t
you guys there?? What does it look like?
A 1995 Nissan?” I said pointing to my car.
Irony
doesn’t seem to be a Japanese trait. At
this point the tourist was whisked away by the tour Leader who was considering offering to take my picture at the Banzai cliff.
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Japanese Tank or is it a 1995 Nissan? |
I kept
meeting people I had met on the flight from Nagoya. I began to feel we were on some sort of
pictorial scavenger hunt with whoever getting the most pictures winning.
If the
projected monsoon holds off I’m going to take a boat over to Manyagaha Island
for some quality snorkelling.