visiting Barrow in end of June - car rental? home stay?

[Las Vegan Cajun]

Originally Posted by From_california

Just add some wasabi and soy sauce and wrap it in a piece of seaweed i'm sure it will taste great! I'm a big Sushi fan.

Another Sushi fan here, I've tried just about everything the Sushi places around here have to offer. Heck I grew up in Louisiana eating raw oysters, if I can eat raw oysters Sushi was no problem for me.

[From_california]

I read there is a Japanese restaurant in Barrow - Wondering what the selection is like? is there muktuk roll? Seal sashimi?

i'm planning to stay up for the entire 48 hours of my stay in Barrow to fully experience the arctic summer..but i'm worried that i'd be bored since I don't know anyone in town. Where do people hang out at night? Is there any place open at night?

[Rance]

I've never been there. I don't even know if they have a bar. I've only been to one sushi location in Anchorage. The Tempura Kitchen on Spenard Ave. I'm sure there are others in town.

[mal_flisk]

Cholesterol to boot.

Am currently scheduling a late summer run to do some prevent. maint. on the Arctic Slope Teleph Co. gensets in 5 western villages as well as Barrow. Point Hope, Wainwright, and Atqasuk are all right. Nuiqsut and Point Lay are a drag.

After that, doing the east side with Anaktuvuk Pass and Kaktovik.

Barrow for a couple of layovers and a PM thrown in for good measure.

With luck, I'll be in one of the villages when they land a whale.

[Rance]

Like this?

[mal_flisk]

Kaktovik?

I was there a couple of summers ago, and had no camera.

[mountain_time_Blues]

Originally Posted by mal_flisk

Nuiqsut and Point Lay are a drag.

I see your point.

[Unhappycamper]

Heh, I have seen that photo. Its a little sad that it is on the index of the towns web page.

[nsm123]

it looks facinating there. I have downloaded many pictures and would love to visit. I live in the North East and when it gets 25 degrees I am freezing. how do they live there? what do they do for entertainment in Barrow? Are there movie theatres? any shopping malls? what is the population there and how many transplants as opposed to people born there and stay?

[mal_flisk]

No shopping malls. There is a good sized supermarket, but I don't know of any movie theaters. People in Alaska (away from Anchorage tend to live a lot closer to nature and a lot closer to each other. I know of a good few transplants in Barrow, including Filipinos and Koreans. Ken's was a restaurant that served Chinese and American foods (steaks and burgers mainly). There is a Japanese restaurant, with some Korean dishes on the menu. A Mexican restaurant too.

Kids are all around town, driving snow machines and four-wheelers. They look to be pretty happy, but they have not, for the most part, spent a lot of time in Anchorage or Fairbanks, where there are a few malls and such. They don't require the constant fast paced input that we become addicted to as people growing up with it on a 24 hour basis.

Having said that, when they do see the outside, or know of it, not a few of them see no way out of bush life, and turn to alcohol and drugs, and the suicide rate in bush Alaska is unbelievable. Literally. In a group of villages in the Y-K delta, there were 20 suicides out of a total population of 2000 people. Not exaggerating. Look it up.

Suicide among native Americans and particularly among Yupi'k and Inuit groups is staggering, and one suicide can trigger another in the same village or another in the immediate area.

The consequences are staggering, and the spiral goes: depression, drugs (including huffing gasoline), suicide, which triggers depression and so on. The familes and villages are tied so closely, that one death affects EVERYONE in a village, and all close villages are tied by marriage and reationships.

I love the faces of the youngest, they always are smiling. I dread seeing a village in the aftermath, as I have seen entire families weeping over a loss one month past.

I never know what to do or say that isn't trite or meaningless. The best I can do is laugh when the kids laugh, because they let everything out when they do. They're among the happiest kids in the world when they're under 12.