Jeff's blog

It has been 6 months since my last update:
– The house is almost finished. Well, at least we can almost move in.
– I have now 24 jumps. Did 2 of those in the desert in Dubai. The local dropzone reopens this week end.
…

But the most important piece of news of the moment is that Pascal, my brother in law, has had a severe hepatitis B which destroyed 90% of his liver. He has been fighting this sickness for years according to the doctors, but it has been 3 weeks at pic activity. He is so brave and easy in facing this, that despite his yellow skin, we could barely see the internal war that raged in him.
Luckily after 3 weeks of wait, with 3 last days on the emergency list and a bad liver, he was finally transplanted a new one Sunday morning. He has been asleep since and the doctors think about waking him up tomorrow.
We all hope for the best.

It’s been a while but we were really busy with the house !!! :S

So to experience something new that would take my mind off the house, I decided to go for Skydive training. Mag wanted but could not join because of her back 🙁
Yesterday for theory, this morning, practice.
1st dive was stressful but good. The 2nd much better 🙂 even if I still do not have the right posture 😐
In the coming days I will continue and hope to validate my PAC allowing to dive by myself !! 😉

Since last friday assemblies of metal, rubber and glass appeared on our terrain and started removing trees, rocks and earth. They must be shaping this unwelcoming place to a living area.
I must confess we are all (parents, neighbours ,friends and us) very excited to finally see concrete progress. We are also amazed by how fast and easily this is done. Today we reached the rock on which the house will be anchored but we are almost 1 floor too high. Digging will be loud !

Finally we have it. Our architect did a great job!
After quite some troubles to start (finding 1500m2, splitting them, finding the architect, agreeing on a design…), quite a long wait (almost 3 months) and a phone confirmation, we received the official approval on friday the 4th. What a relief and satisfaction.
Still lot’s of things ahead but the is a major step !

What was our suprise when the phone rang and Aline told me they were in Italy on the way to Biot !?! We really had a fun time with everyone !
Reminds us how much we love our family and how far most of its members are. We really wish we could see them more often.
After a lovely sunday afternoon in Vallauris with home and love made italian sweets and delicious caramels we spent a wonderful wednesday evening around a nice dinner at Neapolis.

Just a quick post to announce the arrival of Maki the little rabbit. He will share our lives from now on and we’re sure everybody will love him at first sight just like us! Already some pictures on the gallery.

Almost everyone including Mag thought that we were going to Deauville, but I had secret plans. So here we are in New-York. It’s been a while for me and first time for Mag. More news coming…

We’re back in the biggest city on earth. After a dreamlike week on the beach, we reach our first location and final stay: Tokyo. We started off with Shinjuku and its sky scrappers, Yoyogi garden, Harajuku and Shibuya’s fashion shows !! Today, we went to the fish market in Tsukiji, the electric town of Akihabara, Ueno’s museums and Asakusa shops and restaurants.
I must say we’re really sad to leave tomorrow. Mag’s in love with Japan too now so we might come before 10 years this time. Back to reality…

Finally we managed to go diving Manta Ray Point, the most famous diving spot of all Japan. And as our instructor Satoki-sensei said : we were lucky !!! The average is one or two manta rays and we had more than 8 !!! Mag and I are delighted. Please go check the pics on the gallery 😉

I am the happiest man on Earth !!! You should have seen the sweetest face of Mag when we were on final approach around the island with it deep blue see, the white foam of the coral reef, the clear blue sea inside and the white sand beaches !! It was all worth it just for this look on her face.
Now, the real honeymoon begins 😉 let’s live it plenty !

So here is the end of our Honshu trip. We visited Himeji castle this morning and went to Kobe. Tomorrow morning is our flight for Ishigaki. There rest, snorkling, diving, swimming, padding… awaits us.
I don’t know if there will be any Internet access. You’ll see 😉

I really wanted Mag to taste Horshima’s okonomiyaki. It’s the local specialty and she always wanted to eat what they cook in the mangas with the metal tools. So we went to a weird second floor in which there was at least 20 little restaurant one next to the other, all doing okonomiyaki. We didn’t know which to choose until some Australian guy invited us to join. We really enjoyed.
Today we went to Miyajima, the most lovely island in the bay. We took 2 different rope ways to the top of the mountain to have an incredible look around with our monkey friends. The we climbed down and took a last look at the floating torii before taking off to Himeji.
I have to tell you about this little sushi bar we ate at tonight !!! Incredible ! It was so small, no english carte, no picture of food… Luckily I know some food name in Japanese which allowed me to order the most delicious sushi of my life. We did not even stop once full as they were so good. And it only cost us 25 euros for 2 !!!!

We finally got to our guest house in Kyoto. The housekeeper was very nice, helpful and interesting. Thanks for everything Harumi-san.
We did most of the main activities, 2 days by bicycle and 2 days by bus (because we were tired ;). I will not cite them all as it tooks us 4 busy days and there were so many little spots to check on the way that would deserve attention too. But we really enjoyed.
We then took off to Nara. In a rainy day we walked all the way around the park, saw the greatest wooden structure on earth and the great buddah contained. Climbed to assist to a ceremony. And finally went back down for a good and warm meal.
It took us a while to get to Koya-san especially since we had to switch from one train company to the other. 3 trains, a bus and a cable car (impressive) later we were there, in the rain and the cold. We enjoyed as much as possible our weird, cold and vegeterian food at 18:30 (too early), jumped in a hot bath (one good thing per day seems enough) and went to bed. We did not really sleep because of the cold. Yes, it seems that paper wall are not so efficient at isolating from cold nor light. We were woken up at 5 by the bell for the morning office, which was interesting but long and cold. We decided it was then enough and went on to Hiroshima.
God, how a nice, warm… hotel room is sweet. We even got a nice view, a little indoor balcony, an electric massage seat and the Internet !!!

We stayed in a lovely ryokan and went to eat in a Japanese grill, teriyaki place. There we were at the counter and they did not speak English and the carte was almost not even written in roman letters. We still managed to order thanks to a funny (as in drunk) couple sitting next to us. They offered us some sake and some grilled fish. So we offered sake back… You guess how this ended: they were even worst off and Mag was not so walking straight either. It was fun !!!
After a good day sleep, we took off to get breakfast when we realized that we forgot our guide book at the grill. Surprising huh !?! So we were really lucky that someone was there and gave it back. Off to the castle were still stunned by the crowd even if we already knew it was a holiday. More than a hundred meter in 2 different lines. And there is just no way to explain how many people inside at the same time.
We deserved a good meal of soba, the local speciality. The tenant of the ryokan gave us what looked like a typic local address since there was a line for it. It was goooooood. It gave us the energy to get 2 trains for Kyoto. As you can see in the pictures, we stay one night at the station hotel from which 11th floor, we could get a pretty good view of Kyoto by day and by night. Mag is impatient !!!!

Today we enjoyed hiking through the mountain to see the many temples, trees, ponds, Japanese and tourists… Nikko is really a wonderful place. Mag was delighted and so was I.
Then we needed energy so we went a to a so small restaurant that it took us 10 minutes to find the entrance even though it is on the main street. There was only one meal at the carte, but that was the one we were there for : Unagi, Japanese style grilled eel. I still dream about it a few days later!!!
We really wondered why there was so many people and the hotel tenant told us that it was holiday in Japan. The streets were so crowded that we had to pull our luggage all the way down to the station since there was no way for the bus to reach it before us. Our feet still remember thoses many miles and we got sunburned!!!
Finally we were off for 4 differents trains to reach Matsumoto 5h later.

Yesterday we went to Ginza, one of the biggest and most famous commercial street of Tokyo. They call it the Japanese Champs-Elysees. Of course we went to the Sony Building to see many technological goodies. Cameras, video cameras, home theaters… and of course the Rolly. Even if it is really useless the temptation to get one was there.
Then we travelled to Mitaka to see from old friends of ours at the Ghibli museum. Of course we took some souvenirs!!! Ju, prepare Be for Ghibli invasion 😉 We really had a great time even if the museum is more for kids. A piece of film allowed us to see one of the 3 exclusive short movies of the museum. The story of a lost little baby dog, very touching.
Finally, after some Teriyaki and onigiri we took the Shinkansen (Mag’s first time) to Nikko. The were could finally enjoy nature… and Onsen (Mag’s first too). We are in a really lovely little hotel and it has it’s own onsen. Mag loves hot baths but for the first time since I know her she found it was too hot !!!!!

PS: Due to a DNS issue last night, I could not connect to any of my sites 🙁 works this morning out of the blue !?!