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Me again!!! slacking on the blog entries so here's another one for our Okinawa Island adventure.......
so we've been on this tropical island off south Japan for 4 weeks now. I wont go on about the creepy creatures anymore, but i will make u all jealous of the gorgeous beaches we've been enjoying with white sand and sea so blue chris was convinced someone bleaches it.? The best beach we've found so far was a little secret one in North Okinawa and we manged a BBQ with no one telling us off, and a littlee bit of snorkelying. i saw a blue starfish!!!!
Not all the beaches are so pretty though, the city beach here in the capital Naha is interesting to say the least, with a road bridge running over it and a load of love hotels behind, classy. And we've had our fair share of beach searching frustrations, lots of crossed hands when we've been looking for somwhere to test out of homemade bbq set haha not suprised really, and also found a couple of building sites where a beach is supposed to be??!! the problem here being a lot of the West coast is owned by hotels which love digging up beahces and making u pay to go and sit on them the b******s!!! Some of the resort beaches are pretty cool though, i likd the atmoshpere at Sunset beach, American Village (a place devoted to evrything USA) where we saw a beeeeeauutiful sunset ahhhhhh.
Okinawa is a strange place, you'll be sat on a beach somewhere then a fighter jet will fly over from a nearby amercian army base. (America occupies 25% of okinawa). You almost forget you're in Japan sometimes it has been so americanised here. Some areas in Naha are extremly ugly and full of concrete, being a city quickly rebuilt after WW2. But it does have some nicer area and 'Kokusai-street' is one of the most colourful streets i've ever walked down. Palms trees evrywhere and soooooo many souveniers liked snakes in jars of sakes, pineapples everywhere, 'i love pork t-shirts', everycolour fish u can imagine including a blue fish, a stripey fish, a spotty fish...., weird vegetables which look like BFG snozcumbers, and these colourful little lucky lion dog things called 'chisas', which are put outside every home for good luck or something.
It was really interesting to learn about the kamikaze pilots and go and see the japanese underground headquartes where lots of soldiers commited suicide near the ending of the war, really creepy place.
As for our guesthouse, 'osaydo no oyado' (or monkey inn) its been much fun here everyone's really friendly and most dont speak any english, serves us right for slackening on our japanese studies! ive improved slightly anyway and we've been translating through the computer, which makes for a very strange conversation! lots of food parties where evreryone eats togther has also been fun and soooo cheap like 2 quid for an all you can eat Taco rice party (the okinawa version of mexican). we've also had some visitors to and some awesome road trips with German chris and Peter, karaoke, lots of s***head, awamori (local uber strong sake) starbucks and BBQ.
Favourite road trip was day up to the North, which is much more beautiful and rural the further North you go, and we saw some whale sharks in the GIANT aquarium, a dolphin show and visited Pineapple park with free pineapple wine, pineapple cake, pineapple choclate, pineapple cookies, pineapple jelly, pineapple juice, pineapple pie, and pineapple pineapple!!!
As we've been spend spend spending we thought we'd try out camping for a bit when we leave Naha, so there no one can accuse me of being a princess!! We've roadtested the camping gear a few times and seems ok, yet to see how it fairs in a typhoon, or rainstorm yet though haha we may chicken out yet.....
which reminds me if you want sun (note to self, dont go anywhere tropical!) yes we've had a lot of hot sunny days, but also had our fair share of hot rainy days too booo!! the rainy season doesnt officially start untill next month so we've decided to head to California for a month to escape all the soggness. a biit random i know but hey we thought we not.
anyway we're gonna keep enjoying the sunshine we get, ad plan our road trip around north okinawa (very excited mike and zoe!!!)
tar ra for now, holly xxxxxxx
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