Labor Day Weekend

FRIDAY

Friday we had our household goods delivered, which kept us very busy. We did venture out to eat to a place called Izakaya Genki with Matt & Jody. They have very large and delicious sushi rolls. We also dined on a staple dish here… Yakitori, which are kebabs.

SATURDAY

We ventured to our first secluded beach on Okinawa! We went with Josh, Suzanne & their two boys, Max & Brand; Ray, Cat and their daughter Lauren; Soon (who is a dentist for the Navy) and his girlfriend Kiko; and Tran (who is also a dentist for the Navy). We had such an amazing time! Not only was the beach beautiful, Nathan was very excited to try spear fishing for the first time! He came up empty handed, but Josh and Ray both speared a couple of fish and also an octopus. I snorkeled, but didn’t stay too long for the spear fishing adventure… but I did see Ray come back to the surface with his octopus still alive. You have to free-dive down to where the fish are, so Nate is going to have to work on how long he can hold his breath.

SUNDAY

We went to church on Camp Foster, and the priest is one of Nate’s patients. He is a really nice, funny guy. After church we decided we were going to have an adventurous day!

We first had lunch at a restaurant Nate has been wanting to try. It is called FAB. It is a curry restaurant in Sunabe. Sunabe is a very short drive or bike ride north of where we live. The food was delicious and our view was even more amazing! We were outside looking directly at the East China Sea.

After lunch we started driving north with the intention of going to the Ocean Expo Park… which is the 2nd largest aquarium in the world behind Atlanta. We actually didn’t ever make it there because we stopped at so many places along the way! Our first stop was Todoroki Waterfall. It is located in the village of Sukuta. The waterfall was a short walk back in the woods, which was so great to be out in nature… away from the cities. It wasn’t a huge waterfall, but it was so peaceful and pretty.

Moving more north, we thought that it would be fun to stop next at the Nago Pineapple Park! The pineapple park is a very popular tourist spot for Japanese. The park is situated near a pineapple field. You get to tour the park in a very cool Pineapple Golf Cart! After the tour is over we got to sample 3 different types of pineapple wine (very good) and also sample all types of pineapple foods and normal pineapple. We were definitely stuffed with sweets by the time we left!
By this time we had driven over an hour and thought we would head back south, but we did stop at a glass blowing factory along the way! The glass factory is called Mori Gurasu Kobo (Forest Glass Factory). We watched the guys working for a while. It is a really neat process, and they work very quickly!
On Sunday night we went out with Matt and Jody. We ate at a place by Araha Beach (where we both live) called Jet City Burgers. They have the most innovative burgers I have seen! I had a Hawaiian Burger that had the burger, cheese, avocado, pineapple and some other things I can’t recall.

MONDAY

We decided we should do some final organizing in our apartment. Then we explored the local 100Yen store (Dollar Store). The 100Yen stores are so great here! They have everything!! We also checked out a store called UniGlo. People have told us that UniGlo is the Japanese Gap. It turned out to be a great store… we didn’t get anything yet since Nate is bigger than most of the clothes.

We had Matt and Jody over for dinner and grilled chicken. Nate loves to grill now (which I love too)!