Lake Tōya: 2008 G8 Summit Venue

The picturesque lake was chosen as the location of the the G8 summit which Japan will host from July 7-9, 2008. The leaders of the world's eight major industrialized nations will meet at Windsor Hotel Toya Resort & Spa overlooking lake Toya (the pic). The lack attracts more than 4 million tourists a year.

Lake Tōya (洞爺湖, Tōya-ko) is a volcanic caldera lake in Shikotsu-Toya National Park, Abuta District, Hokkaidō, Japan. The stratovolcano of Mount Usu lies on the southern rim of the caldera. It is a nearly circular lake with 10 kilometers diameter in east-west direction and 9km in north-south direction. The main town is Tōyako Onsen, on the western shore.
Lake Tōya is said to be the northernmost lake in Japan that never ices due to thermal activity in the area, and the second most transparent lake in Japan. Nakano-shima, an island in the middle of the lake, houses the Tōya Lake Forest Museum.

Click on the title link to view travel and sightseeing inf.

G8 Toyako summit special reports: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/G8_summit_2008.html

Short Classic Jokes

1. The patient says, "Give me the bad news first!"Doctor replies, "You've got AIDS.""Oh, no! What could be worse than that?" asks the patient."You've also got Alzheimer's Disease."Looking relieved the patient says, "Oh...Well, that's not so bad. At least I don't have AIDS."
2. The teacher of the Earth Science class was lecturing on map reading. He spent the class explaining about latitude, longitude, degrees, and minutes. Towards the end of class, the teacher asked his students, "Suppose I asked you to meet me for lunch at 23 degrees, 4 minutes north latitude and 45 degrees, 15 minutes east longitude..." A student's voice broke the confused silence, and volunteered, "I guess you'd be eating alone, sir."
3. A man is walking down the street and he sees a boy riding a wagon. The boy has his dog pulling it with a rope attached to the dogs balls. The man says "You know if you tied it around his neck, it would go faster." The boy replies, "I know but then I wouldn't get the cool siren."
4. A young couple gets married, and the groom asks his bride if he can have a dresser drawer of his own that she will never open. The bride agrees. After 30 years of marriage, she notices that his drawer has been left open. She peeks inside and sees 3 golf balls and $1,000.She confronts her husband and asks for an explanation. He explains "Every time I was unfaithful to you, I put a golf ball in the drawer." She figures 3 times in 30 years isn't bad and asks "But what about the $1,000?" He replied "Whenever I got a dozen golf balls, I sold them."
5. One day a girl brings home her boyfriend and tells her father she wants to marry him. After talking to him for while, he tells his daughter she can't do it because he's her half brother. The same problem happens again four more times! The girl starts to get pissed off. She goes to her mom and says, "Mom... What have you been doing all your life? Dad's been going around laying every maiden in the town and now I can't marry any of the five guys I like because they have turned out to be my half brothers!!!"
   Her mom replies, "Don't worry darling, you can marry any one of them you want, he isn't really your dad."

Bhutan's Enlightened Experiment

Let have a change this week by taking a tour to the one of our brotherly Buddhist lands, Bhutan. The Land of Dragon, which is a remote kingdom on the Himalaya, is famous for its rolling mountains, cultural preservation and Gross National Happiness. Really wanna visit there once in a life time.

Photographer Lynsey Addario talks about the Himalayan Buddhist kingdom's move toward modernization and democracy with nice pics and videos.Video link:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/video/player?titleID=1410476524