OBACHAN'S SCRIBBLES

So I went to the three-day lecture on local geology, and I enjoyed it very, VERY much! The teacher who gave the lecture was hilarious, energetic and knowledgeable. He is the center of the project to apply for UNESCO Geopark status for this area, I heard. I think they chose the right guy.

The lecture totally changed the way I look at the coastline and rocks that I'm awfully familiar with and have taken for granted all my life. He said that this is a rare place where the evidence of the plate tectonics theory (See? Now I can use some technical terms. ;) is so easily observable. Later at home I found, on the Internet, several research papers on the geological structure of this area, not only by Japanese geologists but also by those in abroad. So this place IS academically important. Gee.

All the sudden, the familiar sceneries with coastal rocks and mountains started looking so interesting to me. Hoping to be a (bilingual??? if possible??) volunteer tour guide here, I started studying the basics of geology, both in Japanese and English. It is so much fun. Learning something new is fun and exciting, isn't it? That's a long-forgotten feeling. Really!

Meanwhile, I've been on another project; I'm making a refuge -- a place where I can be totally alone and cook whatever I like. It's going to be at my aunt's house. My aunt lives there alone but she is almost always absent, being busy traveling around. And her house is in the area covered by a fast Internet service, and -- what's more -- is near the sandy beach good for surf casting! So I've been making arrangements for the past couple of weeks. Hey, I promise. In a couple of weeks, you'll read, probably on my foodblog, about my overnight stay at my aunt's place, enjoying Flets ADSL (a relatively fast Internet service here in Japan), surf-casting and Western dinner with alcoholic drink!

BTW, once things started moving, it looks like that things happen one after another. Yesterday I heard from the "native speaker of English" guy I mentioned in my previous post. Good!
Things are looking up, maybe?