Thursday, March 9, 2006

Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan
45F Sunny

Happy Birthday
to Rahi...He's celebrating his last cool birthday. The big 2-5. He can celebrate his insurance rates going down now.

Its been nice to email and talk with Stacey the last couple of days. I can't wait to get home in 2 days. We can't thank our family and friends enough for their support and assistance this week. It really means a lot to us.

The meetings have been going very well here in Japan. We reached agreement on several items that have been open for several years. The topics over the last two days have centered on the test plans for the next 4 years in preparation for Japan's launch of their HTV rocket which will send a large container vehicle to the International Space Station in 2009.

Last night we had a social with our Japanese hosts at a local restaurant. Plenty of good food and drink. A large group went to Karaoke afterwards but a couple of us got separated from the pack and tried to find them at the Karaoke bar but missed them. Oh well, it was probably for the best considering how I felt this morning. I did get over 15000 steps in yesterday with 10500 on Tuesday.

We were hoping to get out early on Friday and head to Tokyo for the evening but it looks like will be hard at work for the whole day. Bummer.

After the festivities last night and other dinners with a group of 10-20, a couple of Lockheed people and myself are going to do our own thing tonight. We'll also stop by the bus station and buy a ticket for the bus on Saturday to the airport. I think I heard its an 11:15am bus +2hr drive so we'll have about 4 hours to kill at the airport before takeoff. Thank goodness for Sudoku :)

Cheers,
Scott