Yesterday afternoon I said goodbye to Yukiko. It was a sad moment. I really enjoyed my time there staying with her. And it was an honor having her show me her country as I had tried to show her mine. She gave me a handkerchief as a parting gift – so we’ll have to meet again in order for me to give it back. Haha. Great plan. We decided, at the least, we’ll return for each others’ wedding someday. Hopefully before then though.

My flight was from a really small airport, with like 6 gates… and most people spoke only Japanese… so it was great that she came with me to see me off. Everyone there was so nice and helpful. I flew on a cheaper airline, so I wasn’t allowed as much luggage as all my other flights… I knew I would be a little over and was expecting to have to pay at least $50… I ended up being around 5kg over – around 12 pounds. And they didn’t make me pay! So nice! I couldn’t believe it!

I made it to Okinawa and my cousin Ryan, and his 2 kids, Hailey and Jared, met me at the airport! We drove to the airforce base where they live, met up with Jodie, his wife, and ate dinner at the Chili’s on base! So cool! A chilis?! In Japan?! What?!

I haven’t missed american food at all since I’ve been gone (I realize it’s hardly more than a week, but still), but it was nice to have a burger… A friend asked me recently how my stomach was handling all the foreign foods. But everything’s been great. Feels like normal! Although I will say… I have discovered one thing… I LOVE trying all kinds of new and crazy foods. BUT, when I get legitimately hungry… like, if I wait too long between meals, and I feel my blood-sugar start to get low, I very quickly get to this place where I ONLY want american food. Bread, cheese, peanut butter, sandwiches with ingredients that I’m used to. And everything else starts to sound and taste revolting. So, luckily, I brought several packages of peanut butter crackers, so I often carry those for backup – just in case. Haha.

Anyway… here’s a quick taste of what we did today…

First, we went to Shuri Castle. It was a palace in the Ryukyu kingdom a long time ago. It’s been rebuilt since WWII, but it was still pretty awesome.

Afterwards, we went to Shikinaen Royal Gardens… Japanese gardens often include a lot of just walking through nature. With that being said, Okinawa is definitely a rainforest. What confirmed this rumor? Some of my best friends are here. (That sentence is dripping in sarcasm.)[See picture on left for details]. And they’re pretty much everywhere! There’s whole forests of them. So crazy. Haha. (Side note: if none of what I just said makes sense to you, just don’t worry about it.) Anyway…. Being in a rainforest means you naturally see some pretty sweet nature! Here’s a few pictures… Lots of great flowers. A lot of huge spiders in ginormous spider webs. Butterflies. Dragon flies. Cicadas. We saw this HUGE snail. It was seriously as long as my hand. I messed with the coloring on this picture a little bit… so it’s not the exact color. It’s shell is more of a brownish color. Anyway. That was so crazy! I’ve never seen a snail so enormous! We also saw a ton of shiny beetles. I tried to get a picture, but had a pretty hard time because it was cloudy so the light wasn’t good, and the wind kept making the leaves move. I can’t figure out what they’re called… I googled it and couldn’t find anything. But there was a group of at least 20 of them hanging out on a near-by tree. It was really awesome!

After these gardens, we went to Fukushu-en Chinese-style gardens. Okinawans have some Chinese ancestry too, so there’s a lot of Chinese influence here as well as Japanese and American and other things. I think I’d have to say the Chinese gardens were my favorite… I really like learning about architecture and landscape architecture… I took a world landscape architecture class at A&M one semester, and LOVED learning about oriental style gardens, but I’ve never actually seen any. I’m fascinated by a lot of the ideals behind the design of the gardens – one of them being the idea of ‘balance’. Anyway… this garden had a lot of the elements of Chinese gardens that we had discussed. So it was really exciting. This garden had a waterfall, which was fun. My cousins really enjoyed the cave that went behind the waterfall. This is Haley, she’s 5… We all had our umbrellas because it was raining so much, but everything was still worth it! This garden also had a lot of flowers and nature, but also a lot more statues, stone, and Chinese symbols. I’ll put more pictures on facebook… there are of course too many to put them all on here. But this garden also had 2 huge stone pagodas. Really awesome. Here’s one last picture from the Chinese garden. It was a great day, but a long one. We were all exhausted when we got back. For dinner, after Jodie got off work, we all went to this restaurant where they cook the food in front of you and do all the tricks. Like Shogun, or HB Steakhouse. Yes, they really do have those here! Yay!

Tomorrow we’re going to the north part of the island and going to a pineapple farm place and some other things I’m not sure about. But I’m excited! Check facebook for more pictures 😀

Have a great day!