Trip to Okinawa-Week 1

I know I promised this a few days back, but after we got home illness struck the family. Luckily it was only a 24 hour bug, so it didn't last long, but it did put a halt on all things in the house for a bit.

As the title implies, I have decided to break my story of our trip up into 2 posts. There's too much to cover in one.

As I said previously, a little over 2 weeks ago we flew via the Space Available system to Okinawa, Japan to visit friends. This was our first time flying Space A, and definitely not our last. It requires a ton of flexibility and understanding, but it was a fun and different experience from flying commercial.

It was so great being able to so "easily" hop a flight to see friends we've known since our time in KS that are currently stationed in Okinawa. It's been over a year since we saw each other, but we all came together as if we were never apart (I love friends like that). Their boys are both in baseball, so we spent quite a bit of time both weeks at the field watching practices and games. We also spent a lot of downtime letting the kids play together, relaxing, and watching TV.

not sure what they're watching,
but it must be interesting

As you can tell, she hated it. ;)

Of course, we had to do some touristy stuff too!

On the food side, our first day there, we went to a very yummy noodle house for lunch. It was our first experience eating at a place where you have to take your shoes off and sit on the floor. We all loved the experience, and the food. Later on in the week we went to a great sushi house with the same sort of set up, but holes in the floor to put your feet in.

mmmmm sand

The first place we went was the beach complex at Torii Station (an Army base), mostly because our friend is a diver and he had some stuff to do at the dive shop there. All the kids loved exploring the beach, even the baby.

From there, we journeyed up to Bolo point, to explore the lighthouse and the surrounding park areas. It was beautiful and the kids loved playing and running in the park.

A few days later we took the kids to Kadena Marina beach to swim for a while. It was a tiny beach, but the water was beautiful (a bit cooler than in Guam)  as was the weather. The kids took turns being buried in the sand, swam out to a floating dock to jump off, and we all relaxed in the water. The baby, as always, made sure he got his daily mineral intake by trying to eat as much sand as he could sneak in.

main gate

On what we thought was going to be my last day there based on flight schedules, we took the kids up to Shuri Castle. The original castle was built in the 14th century and suffered major damage during the battle for Okinawa in WWII. Much of it has been restored and repaired in the last 20 years, with ongoing restoration projects still underway. It was a wonderful afternoon spent wandering,exploring, and we all learned quite a bit reading the signs (interesting to note that Commodore Perry visited the location in the 1850s). For most of the interior tour shoes were required to be off and no pictures were allowed. One thing I wish we could have done was have tea in the original tea rooms that the King used to receive guests in. We had no idea that was even an option when we went and were entirely unprepared for it, otherwise we would have. We will go back and do that in the future though.

partial view from surrounding park

As I mentioned above, we thought that was going to be my last day. As it turns out, the next morning we woke up at 430 to begin getting ready to leave only to check the flight and find out is had been moved back a day (luckily before we actually drove to the air terminal). It wasn't a bad thing. After we all woke up the second time we took our coffee and the kids and walked down the seawall near our friends apartment.

The next morning we again got up, this time actually making it to the terminal. As it turned out, there was no space available for my large family that day on the plane. With no flights on the 72 hour schedule back to Guam, we went back to our friends house for what would end up being another week in beautiful Okinawa with wonderful friends.