Archive for June, 2008

Well it’s been a couple of weeks since Eri and I got back from our trip to Miyakojima. And some of the photos I took inspired me to add a photo gallery to the site. I installed Zenphoto today and am starting to put in photos slowly. You can find the full photo gallery here: simplistic thoughts photo gallery. Please leave some comments and let me know what you think. I have also made a few other changes to the site, including a new contact form in the side bar.

Miyakojima is a small island about an hour south of Okinawa. You can drive across the island in less than an hour. We flew out of Tokyo airport and arrived at Miyakojima at about 10:00am on Thursday morning. We had our rental car in about 30 minutes and were headed off towards our hotel.

We set the coordinates into the GPS and after practically driving in a circle, realized that it didn’t really work that well. We decided to use the map we had grabbed at the airport and use the GPS for a location reference. After a bunch of confusion we finally arrived at our hotel. Had lunch at the restaurant across the street, and enjoyed the warm clean air (don’t get too much of that in Tokyo).

We were able to check into the hotel a little earlier than we had thought and so put our stuff in our room and went for a swim in the ocean. The water was absolutely gorgeous and there was a lot of life. We even saw Nemo (an anemone containing one large clown fish and one very small one).

After coming back from our swim we decided to do some site seeing and drove a little ways down the coast.The weather was mostly cloudy as we were expecting thunderstorms, but still very beautiful. The entire island was a mixture of green and blue. Later in the evening we went for dinner, and then a massage. On the way back, the thunderstorm hit and the rain fell. There was so much rain that the rain pipe was literally shooting out pressurized water. We had some difficulty sleeping that night due to the thunder that lasted well into the early morning.

For the last night (or so we thought) we were comped a stay at a new hotel that had just opened. It was very nice, with a separate bedroom, private sauna, day beds, and dinning room. I found out later the normal cost is $350 per person per night. From there we continued our travels around the island and then received a phone call from the travel agency telling us we would need to leave earlier (after we had paid extra to leave later) due to a strike of the airline. They wanted us to catch an earlier flight to Okinawa and then hope on of the completely booked flights would open up to Tokyo. If not we would have to pay hotel.

I was having too much fun to be bothered by bad news and after a few phone calls. We had arranged to leave the day after on a guaranteed flight, had our additional night at the hotel paid for, and our seats from Okinawa to Tokyo upgraded to business class. Cost to us, 0$. Great job Eri!

We spent our last day walking around the beach and through the city enjoying the various shops. My personal favorite was the snow salt ice cream. I had already consumed 2 ice creams that day, but couldn’t pass it up, and I was glad that I didn’t. It was great.

How many of you do the following:

-check e-mail first thing when you wake up and several times a day and last thing before you go to bed

-surf the internet into the late hours of the night or morning

-read a several blogs a day as well as current news

-multi-task everything that you do

-feel that the number of things you have to do constantly increases and you have less time than ever

As the amount of information continues to increase we are taking in more than ever. We spend most of our time glued to a little box and always feel that there is never enough time and we can’t get enough done.

There is a really simple solution that can give back a lot of your time and make you a happier person….STOP. Go cold turkey for a week and don’t check e-mail, blogs, or any online newsarticles. Don’t even surf the web. Do it for one week and you will realize that the world doesn’t end. It just gets better.

When you go back to reading, set allotted times. Only check e-mail twice a day, for an alotted time. Maybe 30 minutes each time you check. Take a look at your blogs. Do you really need to read them or do you just read them becuase you feel you have to. The best way to save time is to get rid of the things you don’t need.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes. Getting away from the technology and freeing up time is a great feeling. Now you just have to decide what you will do with the extra time.