SWV Dive Team Japan Trip - Part 2

Okailinasai! Welcome back to the second part of the Japan trip update. As promised, for this part of the report, we will share with you our second part of the Japan trip.

Immediately after the Diving Festival, we left Tokyo Big Sight and were on our way to our next destination, Atami! We spent a night there before we head to Izu Peninsular on the next morning.

In bullet train (shinkansen) to Atami (Hot Sea)

All staff in traiditional Japanese costume (yukata) for the big dinner!!!

Hoiishi!!

The dive shop that we were diving with in Izu was Sea Front / Hatsushima Dive Center. And the part of Izu that went for the diving was Hatsushima.

Group picture with staff of Sea Front in front of their shop in Atami

Briefing by guides from Sea Front

Hatsushima view from the ferry

From left: Nina, Lee, Jimmy and Jay in dry suits

Underwater group photo with guides from Hatsushima Dive Center

Discussion with guides after the dive

It has been a really great and rewarding experience for us all from SWV to be able to dive in Japanese water during the winter season. It was very much different from what we have around here. Although it was our first experience with dry suit, but all the things that we saw underwater made us forgot all about the cold water and the bulky dry suit. We saw seahorse, Japan Pikachu nudibranch (mating), many other types of nudibranch that we never seen here, baby cat shark still wrapped in egg, frogfish, a very big grouper (hatta) and many other interesting things.

The staff at Sea Front was very helpful not only in terms of sharing the information on the dives that we had with them, but also other useful information on the Japanese diving culture and system. Many many thanks to them!!!

Domo arigatou kozaimasu!!!!

After all has been done, we get to have one day off to go around Tokyo for sightseeing, yay!!! We managed to visit Asakusa, Tokyo Tower, Ginza, Akihabara and Tokyo Disneyland. They are all very nice and awesome!! We enjoyed all these places very much!!

Tokyo sightseeing guides: Tsuyako, Asako and Yuki. Thank you all for your hospitality!

Gominori-mon of Asakusa Temple

Tokyo Tower

Tokyo Disneyland!! Place where fantasy comes true!

It's Mickey!!! Kawaii!!!

Splash!!!

This trip to Japan has been very exciting and rewarding for all of us who went there, Jimmy, Jay, Lee, Nina and Dickson (Administration staff of SWV). We gathered a lot of useful information during our one week stay there. Hope we could use all these knowledge that we got there to communicate and to serve all of you who dive with us in SWV!! Onegai ishimasu! And of course Japan has been very fun for sightseeing too! Errm.....maybe except for Jimmy....Why??!! See the picture below.......hehehehe.......

Jya....matta neh!! Cheers!!

Dive Team