Okuma or bust

We drove about 2 hours north to spend the day with some friends at the military owned resort Okuma. They had tent camping  (no thank you), cabins (getting better), and hotel rooms (now were talking).  The ice tea was a $1 and the chocolate/coffee cheesecake made for the perfect "camping" essentials.  Except for the 10 minute rain shower the day was beautiful and we had a blast. 

I have no idea what I was yelling

Hurry up and take the picture, It's hotter than sh*t out here

We had another lazy Sunday afternoon here in Okinawa, just driving around the island checking out different beaches and enjoying the 250% humidity outside. I was even able to add to my collection of beach glass while avoiding the billions of crabs that seem to infest the beaches. 

The Corona Deluxe

We are the proud parents of a new 2 seater kayak. She is called The Corona Deluxe !! We bought her last week but Easter Sunday was the first nice day we have had in a while so we took full advantage of the beautiful day. We walked right out into our backyard and set it in the water, and if you can believe it or not we didn't even tip over !!! The tide was a little low so we just cruised around the bay and explored a sandbar. Dave even brought his fishing pole and fished off the back. We had a ton of fun and are super excited to do it again this weekend.

The dog tried to jump out when we took this picture.

That is a lot of fish poop

We decided to check out the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium yesterday. It was a little bit of a drive to get there for us but we have yet to travel that far north so It was fun. They had sharks, whale sharks and Manta rays all in the same enormous tank. Outside they had sea turtles and manatee. And we even watched a dolphin show entirely in Japanese. 

It's ok, we have free health care

I have finally got around to posting our zip lining adventure. Sorry it took me so long. 
    Once again we were invited by some new friends to go out and explore the island. Now, I wouldn't say that I'm afraid of heights. It's just that I would much rather be shopping than doing anything involving heights. I made a quick phone call to up our life insurance, then put on my big girl pants and accept the challenge. It was the perfect day. It was just hot enough to make me feel completely out of shape when I walked up the hill ( I would not have gone had I known how many hills I had to walk up). We were given a very brief tutorial (in broken english) on how to not fall to our deaths, then we were sent to zip around the jungle.

wrong turn

Some friends invited us to explore the island with them. And since we still don't have cable we jumped at the offer. We originally planned on seeing the sunflower festival then grab some lunch together. We made a wrong turn and we were about to get back on the road when our friends noticed that we made a wrong turn at some ancient ruins. So we decided to go check them out. The views were amazing and we had a chance to walk off the donuts we had for breakfast. Eventually we did find the sunflowers and ended the day with lunch at the newest Okinawa style mexican food restaurant.

Check out my cool new ride

So it's almost the worlds smallest car, but we love it ! The engine purrs like an electric tooth brush and if we get enough momentum we can make it up a hill with both of us in it (without groceries). 

Guess who lives on the beach ?

Originally we were offered a house on base to live in. You may be asking yourself why we didn't take the house we were offered. All I will say about that is the neighbor had a tire in the front yard and a christmas tree still up in the living room. So we decided to look for a place to live off base and in no time at all we found a great apartment on the beach. Moo Shu gave her seal of approval ( a poop on the new carpet ) and we are all starting to feel at home and settled in our new home. 

The neighbors are very quiet

Look out Okinawa

 We passed our driving tests !!!! If you missed more than 6 questions you would fail. We both missed 5. Hey...passing is passing.

    Now we are trying to find me a car. It's turning out to be an annoying process but hopefully I will have something to terrorize the good citizens of Okinawa with by the weekend. Beep beep... honk honk... look out people. 

It's raining Yen

Day 3. We ran around today doing errands and looking at cars. We did not buy a car yet but i'm sure we will very soon,  just as long as we both pass our driving test on Wednesday. We also looked at a few houses on base but they were nothing to write home about so i'm not taking pictures till we know exactly where we will live and get a chance to decorate it. The highlight of our day was our first time pulling out Yen from the ATM so we could hit up the local dollar/yen store. It was called "the 100 Yen store". Dave was not in a shopping mood today so I did not get a chance to do any damage but I plan to very soon !!!

Day 1 ... and we are off and running

We made some new friends and they took us out for the day. We had some lunch (sushi of course), then we took a walk on the beach and finished with some shopping. Nothing like going to a mall where you can buy a purse and some fish heads at the same time.

Um.. not swimming there

Some hot dude I found at the beach

words to live by

funny, the Target by my house didn't have these

This is the view from our hotel