Lab Camp at Oku

This weekend several lab members went "camping" up at the northern end of the island. We rented a cabin and took turns cooking. Nate and Kris made some gumbo for dinner on Friday night. Haruka helped to perfect the roux and the gumbo was a big hit. We finished off the leftovers on waffles for breakast.



Some of us made onigiri to bring for lunch after diving while others watched Curious George.




It was a nice sunny day so we went for a dive. We heard whales the whole time we were in the water. The video below isn't much to look at, but if you listen carefully, you can hear a whale in the background. We saw a lot of neat critters on the dive, including this "flame scallop" that extends red tentacles into the water and the brittle star that Nate is playing with.





Dinner the next night was yakiniku! Takuma and Yukari made BBQ meat and vegetables that was so delicious.



After dinner we surprised Obuchi-san with his going away present. Obuchi-san is the other post-doc in the lab and he is leaving to start a new job at a research lab on mainland Japan. Knowing how much he loves t-shirts, we designed a t-shirt with faces of all of our current lab members on it. He was very surprised and loved the shirts! There is a closeup of the shirt below. If you hit control and click on the picture, it will show you a larger version.