Okinawa-Week 2

As I stated in my last post, I ended up spending a whole extra week in Okinawa based on Space A availability. There were simply no flights to Guam. As a result, we got to spend some extra time sightseeing.

Our first stop this week was Okinawa World. Within the park there's a traditional Okinawan Village, shops, traditional Eisa dance (that unfortunately you can't take pictures of), a Habu (native viper) pavilion and show, a large garden with examples of plants grown on Okinawa, and a large cave to walk through.

front entrance

Our first stop was the dance show, complete with drums and gongs. The baby was so amazed and confused by it all, but everyone else loved it. 

Our next stop was the Habu show. Of course, it not only explored the Habu but other snakes like the cobra and water snake as well. The kids really enjoyed the water race between the mongoose and the water snake they did as a demonstration.

Next were the caves. 

underground waterfall

"Mom look! it's double dark!"

 Then the garden

pineapples!

 We didn't have too much time to explore beyond that as the place was closing. It was still a great afternoon.

A few days later we headed out to the Okinawa Ocean Expo Park and the Aquarium. The park itself was absolutely beautiful, though absolutely huge so there was no way to do all of it (and all of the other attractions) in one day.

At one time the aquarium was the largest in the world. It has since lost that title, but still comes in at an impressive 4th place. The amount of fish on display was astounding.

I always love watching the kids faces

1,2,3,4,5,6 walkers......yup! still have them all!

 The deepest part of the tank complex is an exhibit showcasing large Manta Rays and Whale Sharks. They are amazing creatures. I've read how large they are and seen them on TV, but it's hard to grasp their size until you see them in person. Absolutely beautiful, powerful, and majestic creatures.

After exploring the shark exhibit (complete with preserved shark parts on display), we headed back out into the park itself to watch the dolphin show and see the manatees and sea turtles.

On our way out of the park we indulged the kids in one last request. In the park there is a very large kids play area, that I can best describe as a series of well designed cargo nets. It's hard to explain even with pictures how neat it was and how vast of an area it covered, but the kids loved it and it served to get that last little burst of energy out before heading back to the apartment.

The next day we all packed up and headed back home. It was such an amazing 2 weeks, and we can't wait to head back up there again.

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.

Details

In the last few blogs, I've made a weak attempt to explain all that we learned and observed in Japan in only a few days. There's just so much to cover that it was hard to cover in a few blog posts, so I'd like to add in a few more details now.

It seems as if every person in every job that we interacted with in our time here did their job without complaint and to the best of their ability. From a customer perspective this is an amazing treat too often missed in the US.

Tourist Expenses- I heard many complain about how expensive everything in Japan is before we came. I suppose Tokyo is probably a bit worse than Narita, but Narita is about on par with LA from what I saw (except gas-but there are plenty of buses to get around that expense). I think one key is that everything is priced to include tax and tip, so there's no getting $50 in food, paying $5 in taxes, then tacking on another $10 in tip for a total of $65. $50 is $50. It can be shocking when you see your first 3600 yen bill for lunch, but if you account for the exchange rate that's $47 total: for 6 people, way better food than Applebees (which I'd probably spend the same on) and it includes a beer...... really not that bad at all.

And since we had to buy baby formula while there-even that was the same price as the US. It's not the brand we normally use, but it works well and the baby hasn't reacted to it at all. One of the few things on the can in English is that the company has been around since 1917. Figured that was a good sign of a good company.

Avoiding the real tourist spots can have it's advantages. The kids got to see tradesmen cleaning eel in Narita (a popular and common food in the city), see local markets, try random things along the way and interact with locals. There's so much to be learned and gained from that. Also, places that cater to locals and not tourists tend to cost much less. Of course, you have to be willing to try new things and eat what the locals eat, but there's a lot to be gained from that as well.

Preparing eel

Some drinks we bought off a street vendor. Tasted good,
and the kids loved the marbles that had to be popped down into the
bottle to open it.

Babies are a universal language. The baby was well loved on everywhere we went. Everyone we met was quite friendly and loved all the kids, but of course the baby was the star

He crawled right over to her. She was so excited to hold him

Just sitting and watching Japanese TV is a good time. There was one channel that gave calculus and computer programming lessons, which we thought was crazy, but watching their shows and commercials gave an interesting look into the culture.

Picture menus are great, and how we ordered everything we ate. They serve as a great way around language barriers.

Exploring Narita

Yesterday was yet another amazing day.

After breakfast we hung out in our hotel rooms and played uno with the kids. Afterwards we went out for a sushi, soup, salad, and roast beef lunch. It was delicious! (For the record wasabi goes well with roast beef).

After lunch we hit the free shuttle again, this time to Narita city for an all important lesson in making it up as you go along. Armed only with a map entirely in Japanese and a general knowledge of which direction was north, we set out to find the Naritisan Temple and Park (a 15-20 min walk from the bus station). We found the road that we figured was the correct one, and finally found a sign pointing to the temple to confirm it. It's a small street lined with numerous shops that has apparently been around for centuries selling wares to locals and visitors alike. It was fun looking around in all the shops and seeing what they were selling.

Main Gate

The temple complex was amazing. The buildings are mostly rebuilds from the 18th century or later, but the temple itself was founded in 940 AD.

Once through the main gate and up the main stairwell, you can smell the incense that burns continuously for the prayers of the people. At various locations throughout the temple we were able to observe a special Buddhist ceremony that had hundreds of Japanese women in identical Kimonos dancing in synch to music. It was amazing to watch them all.

I could have spent many more hours in the park behind the temple complex exploring. There were paths that twisted and turned it seemed everywhere, and there were only so many we could walk down in the time we had. What we did see was absolutely beautiful though. The kids got a kick out of feeding the fish and turtles in the ponds as well.

On our way back we stopped at a Ramen place that's apparently a favorite spot among the airline operators that come through. It was great food, and we were able to feed all of us for about $47USD (3600 Yen-all prices include tax and tip here).

Thank you Narita for a wonderful few days. Your people and your food are amazing, and we hope to be back again soon.

Journey to Japan

Wednesday we woke up, loaded our bags, ate breakfast and went to the airport. Then the fun part began. The skycaps saw us and turned the other way instead of helping so we had to go get a few smart carts before we could even enter the airport. Luckily the Delta agents were a bit more helpful inside, and quickly directed us to a counter to check in even though the international counters were still closed. 45 minutes later, all our bags were checked and we had tickets (I can't imagine how much worse it would have been had I not been organized). TSA, of course, was a hassle and freaked out about juice and baby food. Admittedly I had a bit of both, but we were about to get on a 12 hour flight to Japan and I wanted to ensure that my baby wasn't the one screaming the whole way.

Ready to go!

After getting through security we had some time to grab water (I got 6L) and a few sandwiches before boarding. They couldn't actually fit our plane at our gate, so after we checked in we had to board buses and go to some remote area at the other end of the runway with a few gates to actually board. We settled in for a long flight. The kids did well, with Annabelle quickly making friends with a young Asian woman and getting pseudo-adopted by her for a few hours of the flight. When we landed in Narita, Delta's staff were very helpful in getting us and all of our stuff onto our hotel bus.

Welcome to Japan!

The kids were so excited to get to Japan (as were we). Deciding to stay instead of continuing on direct to Guam was probably one of the best decisions we could have made. The Hilton Hotel Narita is a gem of a hotel, well worth the cost to us for the 2 rooms. The staff quickly got our bags up to our room, ensured we had interconnecting rooms (which had cribs waiting for us-yes, cribs, they put one in each room) and made sure we had everything available for a great stay. We all crashed pretty hard pretty early, and were all asleep by 8.

At the hotel

Yesterday most of us were up by 3 (remember we lost a day crossing the date line). We kept everyone calm and tried to get them to rest a bit more, but by 630 the kids were more than ready for breakfast. The breakfast was wonderful and offered American and Japanese options. I am determined to only eat Japanese here, but held off hitting the miso soup and Japanese pickle bar to avoid embarrassing myself until I found an old couple I could watch and follow through. It was well worth the wait.

Following breakfast we boarded the free shuttle the hotel offers to The Aeon Mall in Narita because we needed to get a few things for the baby and were told we could find it there. We did, and probably could have found anything else we wanted too. The place was huge. We ate lunch at the mall and fed all of us for under $30USD. We had Octopus dumplings (they were so good) , fried pork rice bowls and soup for lunch.

We came back, and went to the health club downstairs to take the kids swimming. I wish we could have used some of the facilities apart from the pool, the complex down there is impressive. The kids were a bit weirded out that they had to wear bathing caps to go swimming, but got over it quickly once they got in the pool.

As I type this, it's almost 6am local and 2 kids are already up. It's a marked improvement over yesterday, and the time we have to get up tomorrow for our flight so I'll take it. We hope to explore a bit more today.

If you've made it this far, thanks. Sorry it's so long, but so much has happened in the last few days and I honestly feel like I'm glossing over quite a bit. I hope you all are well, and we miss you all terribly. Thanks to all we saw before we left, I'm sorry to all those we missed. See you all soon!