Riding the trains in Japan

On the Trains in Japan it gets really busy and quiet. It is very clean on the trains and they are carpeted. They run on electricity and wire like on top of streetcar. Every other person has their eyes closed and look like they are asleep. When the doors are about to close they play music. There are two types of trains; ones that go to every station and ones that don’t.

Our apartment is 50 square metres. We sleep on something called a futon, which is a series of blanket on the floor. We have a Television that has only 8 Japanese channels. There is a shower right next to the bathtub, you would shower with soap then jump into a bathtub with the water sitting there all week. We have a rice cooker that has rice is in all the time and as I am writing this I feel like getting some rice to eat, so I am!

Japan

Japan

We are in Japan now. Today we are going on a train to Kamakura to see a big bronze Buddha that is 11 .3 meters in hieght and is green.

Kate tried rice yesterday and she said it tasted like dirt. But Kate actually trying something is a miracle. I have eaten sushi and rice and noodle soup that has seaweed in it.

The Rein forest

A couple of days ago we went to a place where my dad parked his car under a tree and when we came back we had tons ants all over the car. The ants were all Green Tree Ants.
They look like a normal red ant with a green butt. Two ants fell off when we drove down the highway. It took a couple days for all of them to finally leave the car. They are unique because they chain together to hold their prey and they have poison in their butts.

Yesterday we went to the Daintree Rainforest. It is 140 million years old, the oldest rainforest in the world. It is also a World Heritage Site because of it is so old and the Asians come here before Captain Cook to cut the trees. Reptiles like snakes are the top of the food chain in the rainforest. The pythons here can grow up to 10 meters in length.

A cassowary is a bird like an Emu but is more colourful. It is native to the Daintree Rainforest. It takes a dump in a clearing because it knows that it might be a good place to grow the seeds it eats, which in turn will produce more food for him.

The Great Barrier Reef

Today I went snorkelling at the Great Barrier Reef. I saw tons of fish and coral. There was a some big brain coral and a big four foot clam. The salt water was warm. There are box jellyfish in the waters which are very poisonous. We had to wear long sleeved lycra suits.

We did 3 snorkel swims. In the morning the coral was most colourful. The coral is actually part plant, part animal and part mineral. Fish are scared of you if you swim near them. The boat ride out to the reef took about 1 1/2 hours. The boat was a catermaran and travelled about 55 km/hour (30 knots). We have booked to go again this coming Sunday.

Houseboat

We are off the houseboat now. While on the boat, I caught some fish; 8 carp and 2 silver perch. My dad carried the fish by a hook in it’s mouth to the shore where we left them for some animal to eat them. I almost pushed Kate in the Murray River.

We went to find a Geocache that was on the way and I had to go through thickets with thorns to find it and got scratched. We got a bee incased in plastic from the geocache. We left one of our geocoins in the cache.

My sister read a lot and when leaving the boat, dropped 4 books in the water. We watched bad, fuzzy T.V. My dad never crashed the boat into a tree. We saw about a thousand white parrots. The water was green and too cold to swim in.
We are now on Kangaroo Island. It is the third largest island off of Australia and is know for all its wildlife. We are going to see Pelicans and Penguins tonight.