Red October Begins

My third day here in Taiji and it begins. today started out like the others, up at 4am to be out by 5am to watch the boats leave. we then went to the look out post and waited, it took about two to three hours before we saw them. me and mum were in the toilets when they were first sighted but in the 2 minutes it took for us to get back they had passed the shipping lane and where straight on their way in, driving a large pod of bottlenose dolphins with them. though they lost them many times because this pod was a large one they had to surface more, so they were more easily spotted. halfway through the drive ( very close to shore) the pod split, we are assuming because of the baby's they couldn't swim fast enough and their mothers wouldnt leave them behind. eventually they got trapped in the harbour, where the rocks helped the fishermen to trap them into the cove, we stayed at the look out point to watch the rest of the fisherman as they chased the other half of the pod, after another hour they gave up. and something amazing happened, we saw the pod behind the boats swimming to freedom. the fishermen had no idea.

we then rushed to the cove to see what was happening and when we got there we were rather suprised to see more than 20 officials... for 4 people. we watched as they rounded the dolphins into the cove but not before we saw something magical, a baby dolphin, a newborn! jumping 3 metres into the air. they were then taken to their death. only one was chosen for a life of captivity and to me, he was the unlucky one. we could hear the screams.

Arriving In Taiji.

So today was my first day in Japan! I’m so excited! Anyway I couldn’t give the exact date we were going in case the government somehow managed to send us home. But the day went like this,

We were supposed to wake up at 5 am to leave at 6 am for Manchester airport; instead we woke up at 6:10 am and left for the airport at 6:30 am. We were rushing.

 We went through security, and in the waiting area I lost my passport, awesome right. I didn’t notice, it was when dad asked me for it and my face went black, I had left it by the Tester Ipad 2, luckily the shop assistant picked it up who found it hilarious to watch me run around the store in a panic before asking me if I had lost my passport.

On the flight to Japan we got to watch films and my true nerdy side showed because out of all the romance/comedy/horrors I could have watched I watched, Green Lantern, X-Men First Class and Transformers. I tried to sleep when we entered the night zone but the seats were too uncomfortable. On this flight dad managed to spill coke all over my phone and pants and blanket, we all managed to somehow switch seats and we figured out that being in a plane that big isn’t good if you have a weak bladder, if you ever needed the bathroom there was ALWAYS a queue.

Going through customs was easy, mum got through, I got through, and dad got taken to be interviewed for an hour and a half. Mum and I got our passports photocopied so that means I've been marked. The man who let mum through got into trouble we think because mum was already marked and should have been interviewed as well. One of the best answers my dad gave at the interview was this

Interviewer: will you send photographs to sea shepherd?

John Legg: no… there are already people out there doing that.

You know your proud of your parents work when they are pulled aside at customs for an hour and a half .I’ve got to admit I was a tad bit nervous but it passed when me and mum decided to read our books.

Anyway after all that we went to the car rental to find that out of all the silver, normal, average coloured cars we got the lime green one, we agreed that customs must have called the company and made them give us a car that was easy to follow and describe. But it’s amazing!

After the local police introduced themselves and our details taken within seconds of arriving we decided to drive to the hotel but along the way we saw  5 girls walking in a line wearing sea shepherd and save Japan dolphin shirts, so whilst I fell out of the car to run over and introduce ourselves dad had to turn the car around, twice because Marley said that they had just spotted a whale in the bay near the cove, what a place for a whale to swim too. We waited with our cameras and binoculars for 30 minutes but we couldn’t see him anywhere, so i'm praying he swam out of the bay and back to his family.