Shipwreck beach

Once upon an adventure in Japan the Ellis Family set out for a well traversed path for a place called Shipwreck beach. The directions we chose, and trusted, were horribly, horribly wrong. We had heard that the trip should have taken no more than an hour, so when we hit the 2.5 hour mark we knew we were nowhere near the right place. Instead of coming home we decided to stop at a Japanese rest stop, go potty and regroup. When the boys finished (cause you know we are faster) we decided to look at the racks of flyers, all in Kanji. Then Marshall made an amazing discovery. On the back of a DoCoMo (cell phone company) flyer was a map of the entire prefecture (like a large County). It was all in Kanji, but it showed where we were at that moment. The highway system was on there, and we knew what highway we were on, and found the one where we were going. Yay Marshall!!!!!

After a little over an hour, we arrived at the parking area for the beach. We walked for about a mile and a half, picking up sea glass, neat pieces of wood and stone and eventually got to the shipwrecks that the beach is named for.

We have been back a couple of times and always find or see something new. We will go back several more times before we depart Japan and will certainly remember this as one of our favorite places in this amazing country.

Our latest pests...I mean pets

Some people would not think that these things make good pets, but we think they are very cool and they are super-easy and fun to care for. Marshall had seen these at the mall and a few other stores, but they were really expensive and we opted not to buy any. They are called Kabutomushi or where most of you are Rhinocerous, Staghorn or Hercules Beetles.

One day at work, one of my senior NCOs asked me if I was still interested in getting some of these and I asked, "How much and what is the catch". She said no catch, they would be free and that all I would have to do is go pick up the cage, food and beetles at the Youth Center on base.

Unbelievably, the Youth Center had a 25 gallon aquarium full of beetles and gave me all the food and items I would need to care for them. They said they didn't even know how many there were left, but we counted 4 males and 5 females when we got them home. We happened to be having a party that night, so we just left the new pets in the living room. We didn't have any gambling or make the beetles fight or anything, but somehow they were still the center of everyone's attention. The males are very territorial though, and they were pushing each other off of the logs and food cups.

The beetles started passing away almost immediately, but we did have a few that lived for several months. We found ou that they only live for about 6 months as an actual beetle, so it wasn't our fault, lol.

When the last one died, Summer and Marshall took the aquarium outside to empty the wood/dirt and disovered 6 "baby" beetles (pupa) in the debris. We don't know how long they have been in there, but we found out that they live in this state for almost a year. We fully expect to have new Kabutomushi beetles this spring to show off.