I spent WAY too much time in a car this weekend. The rest of the time I spent asleep. Ok, I spent approximately 3 minutes catching a fish. But that was it.

Friday night, 11:55 pm: woke up after 2 hours of sleep which was interruppted by a call from Sara to let me know she was bailing on the fishing trip. wasn't conscious enough to consider TP-ing her house until a couple hours later.

Saturday morning, 12:15 am: jet-lagged Jaclyn & I somehow slide our sleepy selves into our car, say a short prayer for safety at this insane hour, and hit the road.
12:30 am: we pick up Danielle, realize we forgot towels, realize its darn chilly, I open a bottle of lemon coke to soothe my stomache.
12:50 am: we pass Omi-mura and consider stopping to wake Sara, but we're too tired to follow through.
1:15 am (or so): we reach Nagano an hour plus ahead of schedule (damnit!) and find a Royal Host to sit/eat at. Roy-ho is a very non-delicious 24 hour Japanese version of Denny's. Jaclyn and I get pancakes & drink bar, Danielle gets a club sandwich. I am still regretting the full meal I ate with my English dept. folks a half hour before trying to sleep.
2:30 am: we are waiting in front of Nagano station for the rest of the caravan to arrive. No one is there except the drunk business men eating noodles from a trailor stand and squatting on the side walk because they've missed the last train.
2:35 am: we call a trip organizer and are told the meeting place changed (15 min earlier) to a highway oasis 5k north of Nagano... didn't you guys know? In a pile of sleep-induced fury, we get back on the highway.
2:50 am: we reach the oasis. no one else is there.
3:15 am: one other car reaches us, tells us that the rest of the group is waiting at Nagano station... apparently they didn't catch the change either. grrr... how hard is it to plan a road trip?
3:45 am: everyone arrives and we're ready to go. I sadly add up the 2 plus hours extra sleep that I gave up to poor organization.
3:55 am: back on the road and the sky is already lightening
4:15 am: the sun is up. unreal... this country needs to discover day-lights savings...
4:35 am: we reach Joetsu & Naoetsu on the coast of Niigata (the identical spot I'd been last weekend... in fact I even saw the car ferry).
4:50 am: we're lost. we've done about 5 group U-turns. we're supposed to board the ship at 5am. I need to use a bathroom badly.
5:20 am: after a stop for bait, directions, and a bathroom.. we reach the ship..er, boat. it is MUCH smaller than I'd imagined.
5:30 am: the boat folks aren't ready for us so we head to a convenience store for snacks. (more sleep time!)
6:00 am (or so): we finally launch. we get a great, cold & windy shot of Japan from the ocean during sunrise.
6:30 am: we're still searching for a good spot to drop anchor. actually, we've dropped the anchor several times, but the captain isn't satisfied and so it gets dragged back up.
6:34 am (or so): I fall asleep on the bench in the boat and nearly fall off the bench... fortunately my back is to the center of the boat and there is no way to fall off the boat.
7:00 am (or so): we've dropped anchor and people have begun to fish. I'm too tired and too cold to make the effort so I just watch. The poles are rigged with a line tied off with not one hook, but five. above the hooks is a large plastic capsule that the fishers fill with nasty baby shrimp for bait. I don't know how it works, but it does... we begin to reel in the fish.
7:02 am: I am seriously dissappointed with the size of the fish. Having decided to join the trip after seeing pictures of Brook's carribean fishing trip and his texas sized barracudas (or whatever they were)... I was expecting to be yanking tuna out of the water (ok, maybe not that big, but I wanted BIG fish!). the fish we were bringing in on Saturday we less than a foot long. "this is what I pulled an all nighter for??" I ask myself. I go back to sleep, head resting on a wall, feet up on the boat railing, cap low over face.
8:30 am: I am still trying to sleep. The sun is already at a 30 degree angle to land and I feel like I've been out for ages. I ask Jaclyn for the time and she responds "9:30" and I am relieved that we only have another hour and a half. Then she's corrected... it doesn't seem possible that it is still so early!
9:00 am: Danielle hands me her pole after catching her third fish (two at one time!). I drop the bait and a minute later I'm reeling in a fish. Jaclyn hasn't caught any.
9:05 am: I go back to sleep
9:45 am: I break out the banana bread as a snack... its tasty but salty. we move on to the Dots Jaclyn brought back from the states. yum. They taste better then Danielle's fish look (they're swimming upside down due to their rapid ascent to the above sea level world).
10:00 am: Jaclyn has yet to catch a fish but is now using "strategy". I go back to sleep.
10:35 am: last call for fish. Jaclyn doesn't catch a single fish.
10:45 am: we head back to shore. everyone looks like hell (or like they've been up all night then hauling in fish and sticking their hands in mushy baby shrimp bait)
11:00 am: fishing trip is done... we take a group picture and head for lunch.
12:00 pm: lunch done, we head for ryokan (inn)
1:00 pm (or so): we all go to sleep
5:00 pm: alarm goes off
7:00 pm: we wake up
7:10 pm: we eat our freshly caught fish: fried and as sashimi.. as far as I can remember, this is the coolest part of the trip. we ate our fish raw! of course, we hadn't actually ordered a real dinner, so that's all we had- raw fish and beer. mmmmmmmm....

Ok, I will stop the details there and just say that after that we decided we needed to spend some time awake so most of us (minus jet-lagged Jaclyn) went out to an izakaya (bar/restaurant) and had drinks and bowling alley style french fries until we deemed it late enough to go back to sleep. For me this was the way late hour of midnight. It had been a really long day.

Sunday, we woke up fairly early and decided to hit the road as soon as possible! We had to give up on our waffle cravings and instead settle for convenience store bread & sushi then later stopped at another Royal Host. We all felt like sludge.

Monday 12:30 am: I still feel like sludge. I had a good night's sleep, but since its Monday and the 2nd graders are leaving tomorrow on their school trip to Takayama, none of the teachers want to team teach. I've been relegated to internet surfing and brainstorming for my next bulletin board. and to counting the days to home!!