Well, I did something different today...Melody had to work, and we went to Mass last night up at Atsugi Naval Base. That was an adventure in itself, driving around for about 3 hours to get up there. Traffic here stinks...what's more, is they all drive the speed limit, too. Oh well.

Anyhow, I found my first "geocache" today. Geocacheing is a quickly growing sport that uses handheld GPS units to find things that other people have hidden. There are probably 200 or so in Japan, and about 50 within 50 km of here. That doesn't sound far, but it translates to a pretty long trip because of the traffic here. It took an hour to get up to Zama (33 km from here) at 0530. Ugh.

So, I took the train to Kamakura station, and then walked to the Kencho-ji temple. From there, it was about 1km up a very steep hill and along a ridgeline trail to get to the location. I spent about 30 min or so looking for the cache before I found it. It was an ammo can in a shallow hole, covered up with 2 rocks.

Inside were some miscellaneous military trinkets. I signed the logbook, and then headed on back. All in all, I covered about 12 km, most of which was in the woods. Very nice. Lots of people out, though. I saw close to 100 or so just on the trail alone, including some seasoned citizens and a few couples with babies. One lady had one of those front hook papooses with a pretty big kid in it just snoozing away. I bet her back was hurting...

Anyhow, if you have a GPS, and you're interested in geocacheing, check out this website...http://www.geocaching.com/ for more information. It's a lot of fun, and a good way to exercise your skills with your GPS and / or map and compass.