It was low key birthday as we were recovering from Hayley's wedding, we made our way up to San Fran, but thankfully we did get a chance to stop at In and Out burger with Megan, Katie and Matt :)


It has been a little over 4 years since Jen and I both visited San Francisco. Last time we did a lot of the tourist things, see Alcatraz, Fisherman's Wharf and of course the Golden Gate Bridge but this time, we saw San Francisco from a local's perspective. We were lucky enough to stay in the Cole Valley area which is right near Haight and Ashbury with Jen's friend Jen from Michigan. She lives in a three story typical Elizabethan style San Francisco terrace house. It was awesome. I have always loved the San Francisco architecture and to stand on the balcony overlooking the city and to look out the windows and see other terrace homes next door. Simply amazing for me.


We took a walk when we first arrived around the Haight District and ate a couple of slices of pizza at this local pizzeria. The area down Haight St is basically an alternative area with lots of organic supermarkets, non-mainstream (independent) clothing stores and a few shops with different and a little unusual odds and ends. The next day we took a walk through the Castro Valley which is the gay community of San Francisco. Very colorful, very vibrant and a very happening place. Next was the Mission which is a small area next to Castro Valley and has been nicknamed Little Mexico. The two Jens and I ate at a very busy Mexican restaurant.

Our final day we headed down to Union Square for some shopping, walked all the way up to Fisherman's wharf and over to Ghiradelli square for a much anticipated hot fudge peanut butter sundae! Absolutely delicious! For dinner we took in some Japanese, I don't think we would've spent even half of that if we were to have eaten the same meal in Japan..yikes! None the less, it was tasty.

It was a quick stopover in San Fran before heading to Scotland and great to see Jen and hang out in the city for a couple days.

Hayley and Eric got married in Santa Cruz in a perfect perfect sea side wedding! The bride and groom were beautiful, the Mexican food was delicious and catching up with lots of water polo gals is always a fun time. Thankfully the margaritas and dancing helped keep us warm as the night set in.

Jen and Nick hitting the dance floor early!

Go MSU polo alums!

We arrived in Colorado and settled in at my Aunt Sue and Uncle Dan's house for the week. Getting used to the lay of the land and the mountains we quickly got a chance to see the real Colorado beauty that is Red Rocks! For my birthday, Nick got me tickets to see my JT..that's not Justing Timberlake...that would be James Taylor. We drove down to Red Rocks Amphitheater from Fort Collins. This place is an absolutely amazing place to see a concert! Despite the rain and cooler weather, the night was great. Definitely say this is the best place to see concert and seeing James Taylor there made it one perfect evening!

Jen and I reunited in the Bahamas for a week and of course, stayed at Compass Point Beach Resort. It was obviously awesome to be together again with Jen but it was also excellent to hang out with Jen's parents too. We had some excellent Japanese one night, had a Brazilian BBQ another and of course ate lots of conch fritters at the hotel's restaurant. Jen and I also helped her parents Skip and Linda celebrate their 29th wedding anniversary. In celebration of this, we had a fantastic dinner down on the dock, had some beautiful lobster mornay and prime fillet steak. The definite common theme of this week is food. I suppose I was catching up on decent "western" food that I have missed since being in Japan.

Nick having fun jumping off the dock :)

Jen's trying to discover the perfect work/life balance.....4 hours is enough for me and what a great place to embrace this idea! :)

One night in Chicago as a stopover from Tokyo to the Bahamas. I had already aimed to eat at the local deep dish pizza restaurant but another restaurant was calling my name. But I played scissors, paper, rock with myself for 17 turns until finally deep dish pizza won.

Enjoy... I did.

After almost 2 years MIA, I finally got back in touch with my oldest childhood friend Stephanie, before my surgery in MI and then she snatched up the offer to come and visit me in the Bahamas. I finally started running for the first time after my surgery and thankfully Steph who is training for a marathon was willing to give me a little motivation to get back into exercising! We had a great time and even Steph got to be honorary bartender for the night mixing up some fine drinks for all :)

Nick's second round of 18 hole golf course - 131, that's only 59 strokes above par... It was a tough day on the green so I'm sure Tiger Woods would have shot a 50 or over (at least!) We celebrated with a cigar during the last couple of holes. Thanks to the Gooch.

The Scully's were finally all together for the first time since December 2005!. Joe came down to the Bahamas and then I soon followed at the beginning of July. Here's a pic of 4 of us at Compass Point. Unfortunately Joe had to leave before Nick's arrival. Who knows when the next time all 4 of us will be together again.

I've been in MI over a month now and had only planned on staying until the 17th and then heading out to Colorado. Well things didn't go exactly how I had planned and I'm still here! Yes, it's been great to visit with friends and family, but I was looking forward to moving onwards to new horizons.

Many of you may know the reason for my prolonged stay in this great sate of Michigan, but for those who don't...

I noticed my left leg getting larger a few months back and thought it was just from favoring my left leg and perhaps peddling to much with it on my bike. As it continued to grow so did a bump in my groin which I had thought just was my pelvic bone, just a little asymmetrical.

I had it Xray-ed, an MRI and a visit to an Orthopedic Surgeon who ruled out a bone and concluded it was a mass of some sort. He then referred me to an Orthopedic Oncologist. The oncologist, Dr. Irwin decided to bypass biopsying the mass and just operate and take it all out. I had surgery, they removed it all and found out that it was a tumor and had been putting pressure on my femoral artery and vein, which was causing my leg to swell. When they took it out it was the size of my fist, a bi-lobed fibrous tumor, it was huge!!

While it looked clean and the Dr. felt it was Benign they had to do a pathology report to find out. A week later I got the good news! I have a big scar now on my bikini line and am healing up. I had to take it easy for a while, but can now walk. I should be back to running and biking in a month or so. They muscle where it had grown in is still recovering, but hopefully now everything is starting to get back to normal. Although, the size of the left leg hasn't seemed to shrink any..hopefully soon it will begin to. I am very lucky and thankful that everything went so smoothly and really thought my Dr. was excellent. I was fortunate to have my mom come and visit during surgery and after to take care of me, not much of a vacation for her, but it was good to be together.

If anyone is interested in a photos of the tumor..come on you know you all are..
click here. Jen's Tumor I would've posted it here, but will spare those who really aren't interested in seeing it :)

Signing off from MI

The victory is ours! We are victorious. Break open the champagne, start the music, smash a few plates on the step, hoist us high in the air on chairs or just get us our very own soap box!
In our first season we've won some silverware. I play for a team called the Tokyo Panthers in the Tokyo Metropolis League, down in the third division, and we just won the FJ Plate Knockout Competition Final. We beat a Japanese team called H-United 2-1. On our way, we managed to knock off teams from the first, second and our third division. Not a bad little feat for a bunch of amateurs! Here's our team photo.

I've been here for almost 2 years and 4 months now. Jen and I have experienced a lot together and then in the last 4 months, I have been basically just saying the same things over and over again. When my friends Sonia and Glyn were staying with me, it occurred to me that I am taking things for granted. There are some really weird, strange, "only in Japan" things out there and I am now a little oblivious to them all. So without any further ado, I would like to start my Top "Ten Quirky Things about Japan" list.

#10 Everyone in Japan seems to be employed. There's this bakery down the road with about 10 spots for cars. Every weekend without fail there are 3 parking attendants working there, complete with little flashing batons, whistles and ties.

#9 Even the homeless people look fashionable. I'm not kidding, they still wear all the fashion accessories!

#8 Japanese people won't sit next to foreigners on trains. Do we smell? Probably better than the typical coffee/BO/cigarette stench arising from the salarymen. Are we taking up too much room? Not anymore room than other Japanese people my size or larger (of which there are quite a few). So what is it I hear you ask? I have NFI. But I do know that the train can be quite crowded and the seat next to me is the only one in the carriage vacant.

#7 Men's hairstyles. Shoot me, shoot me now. No, actually shoot them! I have seriously seen more Japanese guys using the mirror to look at their hair, play with their hair, fix their hair than I will in the rest of my life time. I saw a whole team doing their hair before an indoor soccer game one night. Soccer players on the field constantly fix their hair at half time and some even during the game. Grown men will be looking at a shop window really closely and I'll think to myself "Why is he looking at that poster from 20cm away?" and then I'll see his hands picking at strands of hair and placing them where he wants them. He's looking at his reflection in the glass.

#6 Soccer players in Japan. They dive, the don't tackle and if you ask me, their a bunch of pansies. This is typified when I was reading the team bios of my favourite local team, Chiba JEF United. About 5 of the players from a team sheet of about 15 said one of their hobbies is shopping.

#5 Krispy Kreme donuts. There is a store in Shinjuku and people wait for, on average and i'm not kidding, over an hour and sometimes beyond 1.5 hours to buy donuts. I thought perhaps it was a new thing in Japan so the novelty would wear off but one year on, the lines are just as long. These are just donuts people!

#4 Japanese people and their phones. The Japanese word is Keitai, Americans use cell phones, Aussies use mobile phones. In Japan, it's typically a phone with the ability to call other phones, send emails, take a photo, play games, surf the internet, listen to music and that might be it. But Japanese are just so obsessed with them, they use it in their cars while driving, while riding a bike, while walking, while on the train, while at a soccer game, anywhere! The typically situation is that the train doors open and everyone gets on with phone in hand, they search for a vacant seat and sit down if possible. Either way, the next action is to whip open that phone and start doing whatever it is they do. This craze has actually spawned keitai novels, where authors write their novel on their phone. Oh yeah, and you can now get phones in Japan which you can view TV on...

#3 Warm toilet seats. There's nothing funny about a warm toilet seat. Means that someone has just used it. BUT! A lot of the toilets up here have seat warmers so in winter, they are permanently warm for your little bottom! Crazy but true. These toilet seats also have a little French style bide and a button that you push when you want the sound of the toilet flushing to cover up any bodily function noise.

#2 Fashion. I should just leave it at that but fashion in Japan is pretty unique, some might say peculiar. Women's fashion comes in cycles (knee high cowboy boot season is October and November) and at the moment it is typically short skirts or short shorts with a pair of high heels (pumps) AND a pair of awful knee high stockings. It apparently doesn't matter how short the skirt or shorts are, so long as you're wearing the black knee high stockings, its all good.

#1 Japanese men and handbags. Now this is not rife throughout the male population... oh yeah actually, it is! Men carry bags that can only be described as women's handbags. At first I saw a few guys carrying their girlfiend's handbag and then I saw this being repeated almost every weekend, which in itself is scary. But then I started to see single males walking by themselves with bags that were very feminine. The love em, the feel of a handbag over the shoulder, nothing like it apparently!

I just wish that I had lots of photos to back up what i'm saying. I know what you're saying, easy, just take some. But I can't because, alas, I have become Japanised and people just don't take photos of others in Japan.

Saw this last night on the Canadian station while watching the RED WINGS win Stanley!


Not sure if these sumo wrestlers would get in trouble for doing a 'bikini car wash' commercial, but it sure is funny!