Time off from Work

Futenma Shrine

These past two weeks have been GREAT. Danny and I have both been free from work & therefore all obligations and most responsibilities. It was great, I felt like a teenager again, not having to worry about work calling, spending most every moment I had with Danny, and him with me... We need to take more time off. Life is too darn short. Alright... so what have we been up to you ask? EVERYTHING! When we first got to island, we used to just get in the car on Saturdays and Drive.. we would stop anywhere we thought looked interesting. Back then we didn't find the need to be responsible for our cameras, so we never got any pictures of anything. Ahhh but I have become obsessed with photography lately so we took a camera everywhere we went these past two weeks. Please check our flicker account for more photos. Its free to look at, you don't need to sign in to anything. :D

The first thing we saw was the Futenma Shrine. It was pretty cool, we don't know anything about it because no one spoke English and there wasn't anything posted in English either. But it was pretty cool, we went into this underground cave and saw what I think may have been a tomb, but I'm not sure because you aren't supposed to take pictures of them and they told us we could take pictures of this one.. though that might not have been what they said.. my Japanese isn't very good.. so we took pictures anyway. There was, of course, also the shrine, where people were praying (I think) and worshiping whatever it is they worship there. Pretty sure they worship their ancestors... but don't quote me on that because I'm not 100% sure.

Next we came across some castle ruins. Katsuren Castle, to be precise. It was pretty cool, to many stairs for me. There was an awesome view of the ocean on one side, and an awesome view of... well the ocean... on the other side. You could also see what I'll refer to as the city, though I'm not sure you can call anywhere on Okinawa a City... because nowhere on this island is anything like LA, NY, or DC. It was a beautiful castle though, I'm sure, at one point. It's pretty cool to be standing in a grassy field surrounded by rocks thinking, "Wow I'm standing where royalty once lived. Sweet!"

This time we traveled north on Highway 58. We stopped first at Okinawa Hollywood, but the beach was littered with garbage and it was too windy and cold to try and find anything worth photographing. I think this is the only beach where I've ever seen trash litter the sand and the shallow waters. So off we headed, going north. We found this place called Cape Manzamo. Very beautiful, and would have been much more enjoyable if the wind hadn't kicked up and nearly knocked us off a cliff. It was cold. Wind chill, burr! But there were some awesome waves, and the water was absolutely breathtaking. The view of the ocean was great. We'll definitely be going back there when the weather is a little nicer and the sun shines on the water, turning it a crazy-beautiful shade of turquoise.

Back on to HWY 58.. We came across this interesting looking building, so we decided to pull in. We found that it was a sweet potato factory! This starch is so popular here. Its purple, and they put it in everything. Pastries, ice cream, stir fry... you name it. If you see something edible and it's purple, its probably not grape flavor... its probably sweet potato. So about this building. Out front there were so many little girls dressed in their Japanese style clothes, the traditional kind, not the crazy weird fashions you see walking down the street on a daily basis. We went inside and it was as if the color purple had decided it was going to be king and this was his castle. Everything was purple. The pastries, the noodles, the flowers, the uniforms... it was great. So here we are wandering around this building when we come across the factory, so awesome, machines making these purple pastries faster than I ever thought possible. It was a beautiful process. To make it even better, they have their own private beach out back! So we trotted down there and took some pictures by the water. It was gorgeous. It looked untouched! No footprints, just sand, waves, and some cool rocks. You'll probably see one of these photos in our Happy New Year! Newsletter we send out.

And finally, our last stop of that day, and probably one of the most exciting, the Okinawa Tropical Kingdom. AKA the Fruit Farm. YUM! They had the best pineapple I've ever tasted. Ok but I'm getting ahead of myself. So you drive up to this building, and it looks like a rainbow threw up all over the front of the building. Colors colors everywhere! It was insane! You'd never see anything like this in the states. Alright. We bought our tickets (about 700yen each) and walk into the factory. Well I have to admit, at first I was a little disappointed. There were plants, hooray, but no fruit. Not only that but it didn't even seem like there were many plants in there. Luckily I didn't tell Danny right then that I wanted to go home now, because we found some cool stuff. First we found the pineapple farm outside. COOL we had never seen a pineapple plant up close and personal before. As we walk along, I hear so many birds. And then I hear a prerecording telling visitors not to be afraid if a bird decides to land on their shoulder. I was getting excited. We came up to the "bird room" and wow! So many colorful, awesome looking birds! Weird ones i had never seen before! I even got close enough to take a picture next to a few rainbow birds. I didn't want to hold them like some other people were, because lets face it, birds are dirty and they poop a lot. But I got to stand next to them and get some coool photos. Danny was the camera man during this event. So, as if my day couldn't get any better... we walk out of the bird room and into.. that's right.. the butterfly room! These babies were freakin' huge! And so awesome! They would just crawl right up to you and get on your finger. Or fly onto your hat (true story!). They were so cool that I'm putting up several photos of the butterflies.

As soon as we walked out of the butterfly room it started to rain.. so we decided it was time to call it a day. What a great day.