Valentine's Day in Toba
This year Valentine's Day and the President's Day holiday fell on the same weekend so it was perfect timing for a fun trip. There are a couple of famous National Parks in Mie and Wakayama prefectures that we really wanted to visit so we decided to make it a road trip (its not as convenient to get to these place by train and the drive time was only around 6 hrs from Camp Zama) We arrived in Toba, a little town right at the mouth of Ise Bay (which leads to the major Port of Nagoya). Toba is famous for a few different things - it was here that Kokichi Mikimoto discovered how to produce cultured pearls. This area is also known for ama divers, the women (its only women) who free dive to collect sea life (oysters, abalone, octopus, etc...) from the ocean floor. We made a visit to Pearl Island and were able to see them dive and also walk through a very cool museum showing how cultured pearls are made. While we waited for the ama divers we noticed some very dark patches in the ocean. ...