Memories of Japan

His name is Yoshihisa Yamada. The Japanese characters that make up his name can either be pronounced Yoshihisa or Miku, so he suggested we call him Mickey or Mike and so Mike he was to us. He was a foreign exchange student who lived with me my senior year in high school back in the mid 70s. He spent almost 12 months living with my family and me. We welcomed him into our home and he learned about American culture while we learned about Japanese culture. 


His first night, he asked how to use a bed, as he had never slept in one before. Later in the summer, when we were having Tacos, he stated, quite enthusiastically that he loved Tako. He was rather disappointed when the Tako (Octopus) didn't show up on the table. He introduced us to Tako, and tempura and cooking with Sake. He became an honorary cheerleader at our high school that year, dressing in typical Japanese garb for each football game and basketball game that year. 


We introduced him to Disneyland, hamburgers and camping. That year, we camped twice at Yosemite National Park and he ran to the top of Nevada Fall along the Mist Trail. That trail is extremely slippery and tough just to hike, let alone run. On the second camping trip, he ran to the top of Yosemite Fall, just because he could. 


He and I both cried when he left the following summer in mid July, just after our country celebrated its bicentennial. We exchanged letters over the first couple of years, but then life seemed to get in the way and we lost touch. He called the morning my sister got married and we all talked with him. He'd lost a lot of his English in those last 6 years and it was difficult to understand him at times, but he still sounded like Mike. 


I have tried over the years to contact him, using all sorts of Internet search engines. His name is a rather common name in Japan and I haven't been able to reacquaint myself with him. 


His family is from Morioka, just north of Sendai where the earthquake hit this past weekend. Unfortunately, I have no idea if he still lived there or somewhere else. Needless to say, he's been on my mind a lot this past week. I hope and pray that he is safe and that his family is also safe. He would be 53 as of last December.

Chaz the Spaz

I’m probably going to jinx this guy as soon as this one is posted, but I have to write about Chaz the Spaz. Chaz was a fuzzy little guy that was given to me by one of my students almost 6 years ago. I told this student that I was going to make him into a travel bug and send him out in the world, perhaps never to be seen again. As anyone who has ever released a travel bug or a geocoin into a cache can attest, those words are aptly spoken. There are probably a million different ways travel bugs can disappear, so expecting them to live long and prosper can be a crap shoot. Getting them to their destination? That can be even harder to achieve in most instances. Unless the travel bug is huge and unmistakable like Cindy (the Cinderblock), or Spare Tire, eventually, it’s probably going to disappear. But every now and then, you get a travel bug that takes a life unto its own, like Chaz the Spaz.

I released Chaz July 5, 2002. In the 5 and a half years he's been traveling, Chaz has been to some very interesting places. He started out in a rather nondescript cache off a mountain road in Los Angeles County in California. From there, he went several other places and then suddenly zoomed to Texas 1185.3 miles away.

Chaz was now racking up the miles, but I figured since he was in the urban area of Austin, he’d probably jump around from cache to cache in the city and not really get much mileage. OK. I could live with that. Actually, I really didn’t have much of a choice unless I changed his page saying that Chaz wanted to come back home. I think that would defeat the purpose anyway, so I decided to enjoy his travels. He bounced around, traveling 7 miles here, 20 miles there. One time he was placed in a cache and when he was retrieved from the same cache he had moved 53 feet. Go figure that one out, but it shows up on his cache page.

Chaz stayed in Texas from August 2002, until September 2003. Then he needed to get a passport. His next stop was 5654.3 miles away in Italy. Immediately after that he was in Germany and then three months after that, he was in the Netherlands. Once in the Netherlands, he started to do the Texas Two-Step, not straying very far from the first location he had been placed. Chaz spent 10 months touring the Netherlands and then he got on another plane.

His next stop, 9369.6 miles away was in Queensland, Australia. From October 2004 until October 2005, Chaz toured around the outback and along the coast of Australia. He was removed from a travel bug hotel in October and promptly disappeared. 8 months later he resurfaced again, this time back in Europe in Germany. The last cacher to find him in Australia apparently never logged him back into the cache that he was placed in, so the only reference we have of him is a log by a cacher in Germany stating, “Don't know how it came back to Germany...but today I found it in this cache (Auf dem Polle (visit link) )” This German jump added another 9928.5 miles to Chaz’s trip total.

Within two months, Chaz was back in the Netherlands and stayed there for over a year, 8 months of which were in another cacher’s possession. By August 2007, I started getting discovery notes for Chaz. That was good because it told me he was still out there, but it was also bad because he wasn’t moving. I should have known better. On August 19, 2007 Chaz was picked up. Two weeks later he was placed in a cache in Japan. Ten days later, he was picked up from Japan and is now resting comfortably in A Silly Story in the United Kingdom. Total mileage for Chaz as of this writing is 41310.8 miles.

Other interesting stats for Chaz.

He’s disappeared twice and resurfaced twice.

The oldest cache he’s been in is Bull Creek Overlook GCFE9 – yep only three digits in that GC number and it’s still active.

Chaz has seen the insides of 38 geocaches, half of which have since been archived. He’s also been posted to one virtual cache for mileage purposes.

For comparison purposes:

Cindy (the Cinderblock) has been out for 4 and a half years and has traveled 11851 miles.

Spare Tire has been out for almost the same length of time as Cindy and has traveled 1891 miles.

I guess the point I’m trying to make here is don’t give up on travel bugs. Yes, they disappear and many are shortlived, but every now and then you get a jewel of a travel bug like Chaz the Spaz and it all becomes worthwhile.