Our Adventures this Week....

I guess I am only making time to update once a week now, which is fine, but it just takes more time to cover all the things we have been doing and experiencing. We started the week by taking a nice evening walk by the beach and discovered a cool Pirate Ship playground with a kids zip line. We ended the evening with snow cones and then suddenly, it began to downpour on us, so we had to run back to the car.

The coolest part about living on base, is watching the Fighter jets practice. We're not allowed near the planes, so this is as close as you can get to them:

We took a day trip up north toward Nago, in hopes to see more of the island. We found a nice little beach where the locals go and enjoyed some sun and sand:
We also learned how to use a non-western toilet...that was interesting!

One of ours friends took us to a neat park the other evening that had long roller slides and a drop-off slide. This slide drops at a 90 degree angle...it's very intimidating and scary at first, but it was a hit with the kids after they figured out they were not going to die. Do you see Ben there, dangling from the bar...he loved it! Mia opted for the more kid-friendly slides that don't drop off.
Random Observations: Japanese graves are all over the place...right next to supermarkets, in between houses you'll see a group of them, and while we were at the playground, there was one right next to the kids slides...weird. This one is overgrown, and obviously the family does not take care of it anymore. I believe the Japanese cremate their remains, and the grave will hold all the family inside. Once a year, the families come and have ceremonies and prepare and eat food there. This is a large one, but I have seen little min-sites in very random places. I found this neat tree growing straight out of a rock and it had wrapped it self around it too.

The kids and I discovered these fly-trap-like weeds living in our yard. We thought it was very interesting as you touch them, they close up:

Other random things I have observed is that it is totally legal to drive and/or park on a side walk if you feel like it. If you see a soda vending machine off the road, that is the only time you can stop your car, put on your emergency lights and get out of your car to buy a drink. Many serious businesses (Like banks and stores)have cute or fuzzy characters or animals to represent their company, like all these shipping companies character logos: Like America has "dollar Stores" everywhere, Japan has their own "100 Yen Stores" all over....and actually, they have awesome stuff for a dollar, um, I mean 100 Yen.

I think we are really getting the hang of it here and we are just in love with the island, the culture, the people and of course, our time together as a family is just priceless!