First and foremost, congratulations to the SOUTHEAST DIVISION CHAMPION Washington Capitals!!!


It’s been cool and rainy pretty much since we got here, but today was very warm and (mostly) sunny. We went all the way up the coast to Hedo Misaki, the northern tip of Okinawa. Awesome cliffs and coral reefs:






Neko-San:

Then we went down these scary, winding one-lane roads to the beach:


They like to tie their rocks together for some reason...

Lots of shells and coral to collect:

The jungle is trying hard to encroach on the beach:

The East China Sea is really warm:

I was thinking about wading in, then we saw this little guy:

Sea snakes are beautiful, but aggressive and seriously poisonous. I decided not to wade...

Man, it’s gorgeous there:

Then we drove down to Nankijin Gusuku, a 13th century castle which is being excavated and restored:


Neko-San (the fortress is a kitty sanctuary!):

Our next stop was the Izumi Pineapple Garden, which is one of the most fascinating, creepy, and hokey places I have ever been:


Everything is pineapple. They have pineapple cakes, pineapple wine, pineapple chocolate, pineapple jewelry... a world of pineapple. We wanted to take a ride on the pineapple car:

but the line was too long. Alas.

Then we went and had dinner at a traditional Okinawa restaurant up in the hills. It’s really good if you like tofu, pork, pork fat, and noodles. Jim had something that he thought was pickled onions, but when I tasted it and told him it was pickled intestines he looked kind of ill all of a sudden... actually, it was pretty good, if you’re into that sort of thing. I mean heck, if I’m willing to try grub worms and tarantulas in Cambodia, what’s a little pig butt?
I should have warned him that they love pig guts here. This ain’t Tokyo.

They took away our Business class travel, so I had to fly steerage for 21 hours - and I didn’t sleep the whole time. It wouldn’t be so bad on a hop to London or Frankfurt, but whatever. I slept real good last night and we have today off. The guy next to me on the 14-hour flight to Tokyo had a rather bad gas problem, then it turned out he was sitting next to me on the flight to Naha, too. That’s the problem with the lower classes - vulgar louts.

It’s been foggy and drizzling all day:

We went for a walkabout, looking for sushi and beer, but it turns out that the city is dead on Sundays until about 2 or so:

Lots of closed places that look like they might be fun:


And some places... not so much:

We finally found an open place - Pittsburgh:

Not exactly what we really wanted, but it was decent and they had cold beer. Maybe we’ll head out in a little while and look again.

At least it’s warm-ish here. Just warm enough to make you decide if you would rather get soaked by rain or drown in your own sweat under a rain jacket. There’s nothing old here, as far as I can tell. I have a feeling that the Marines really trashed this place in ’45. The people are pretty nice, unless you are military, and neither of us look like military types. And it’s true, Japanese men love to leer at young girls in schoolgirl outfits. Kind of creepy in my book, but whatever floats your boat...

Hopefully, we’ll get some pointers from our people here for fun places to go next weekend.