Splish Splash!

The Obon festival begins tonight on Okinawa.  Obon is when the ancestral spirits come back for their annual visit and the (living) families have picnics at the tombs with their “extended” (deceased) family.  Then, after the living families have eaten their fill and offerings of rice, sake, and other goodies have been left at the tombs, eisa dancers dance, chant, and bang their drums in order honor and send off the spirits for another year. 

But the reason I’m mentioning Obon is because its celebration made me realize that we haven’t seen a single eisa performance all summer!  It just goes to show that I’ve been making good on my intention of spending all summer floating my belly in the ocean.  Incidentally, the superstition goes that you’re not supposed to swim in the ocean during Obon because the dead will take you with them into the sea as they depart.  Good thing we’re not superstitious because it was a beautiful day at the beach!

But first, pictures from earlier this week when we had some smaller scale water play with neighborhood friends.



Now to the beach . . .
The flavor of the day was Toguchi.  I was actually voting for a water park with water slides, pools and a lazy river, because we haven’t been there before, but Jake hadn’t been to Toguchi either and the beach is free whereas the water park is not.










I think it was a good choice!


We explored a section of the beach that Logan and I didn’t get to last time we went and found some neat little coves, caves, and rock formations.  It also hit me that, while this island doesn’t offer much in the way of man-made architecture, the natural architecture more than makes up for it.
Of course, there are the turtle-back tombs in the realm of interesting man-made architecture.
  I’m not sure playgrounds really count as architecture, but I am a big fan of the playground-at-the-beach concept.
Seriously, check out the view from the steps leading up to the top of the roller slide!

After playing at the park for a while, we traded the camera in for our snorkel gear and Logan’s float, but again, no underwater pictures.  It was great though—Jake and I could both snorkel while towing Logan along with us in his float.  Jake and I were amused by the fish (and one sea snake!), while Logan was amused by Jake and I popping in and out of the water in our masks.

Not sure how many more weekends we’ll have before the baby decides to show up, but don’t worry, I’ll keep you updated either way!  Hope your weekend was good as well!

If Only . . .

If only we had an underwater camera (like the really cool one that SG has), then I could show you the REALLY amazing things we saw while snorkeling at Maeda Flats this weekend.  We’re actually thinking about getting one—depending on whether or not Jake’s camera, which I dropped in a shallow saltwater puddle at Toguchi Beach last week, revives.  In my defense, it was the camera or Logan.  But anyway . . . until then you’ll have to make do with our above-water shots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maeda Flats has lots of exposed and shallow reef, with little tide pools everywhere which are chock-full of pretty interesting sea life you can see even without the snorkel gear.

Logan, who obviously didn’t snorkel, still had a great time.

  Some pretty neat caves are there too!

We took turns snorkeling and keeping an eye on Logan, and it was a GREAT afternoon.  I can’t wait to get back out and do it again!

We all had a hard time dragging ourselves away from the beach that day . . .

Of course, life back at the house isn’t too bad either, especially with double rainbows to brighten our Sunday!

Sidewalk chalk fun with the neighbors included drawing roads and watching Logan run laps while chasing Connor on his bike. (Seriously, this was like 2-year old marathon training.  I think Jonathan would have been impressed!)

In other news, I’m at 36 weeks now.

  It still doesn’t look too bad from the front, except for the fact that I’m a dork :)

But it’s bedtime now, so I’m going to run along.  Thanks, as always, for reading and generally caring about our life over here!

We’re busy, busy, shockingly busy!

I’m tired of not being caught up here, so I’m going to give you everything from the last two-plus weeks all together. 

Up first: the blue skies and crystal-clear water of Torii Beach form a perfect backdrop for one studly husband and one small boy in his “fwoat”.  The float is a recent favorite—when it’s just Logan and I, we like to hook the float rope around my foot and I swim, dragging Logan behind me. 

On this particular occasion, I got to relax on the beach while Jake frolicked with Logan.  I enjoyed the sun, a good book, and some beautiful sights, like this one-winged “butterfly”/kite-surfer strolling down the beach.

As a rather random aside, while buying my new car I commented to the previous owner about a camp chair in the back of the vehicle and he left it in there for me!  As you can see, it happens to match the one Jake already had, so now we have a nice little set!

Torii Beach has some nice amenities, like this little water park.

Ice cream on the way home is always refreshing!

Moving on . . . we found a new park nearby.  They are tucked into odd little corners, so even though we’ve been here for a year it’s easy to discover things you’ve never found before.

  

This one had a train theme, which is great because Logan has really been into trains recently!  There were train engine-shaped stairs leading to the roller slide (above) and another little train engine for the kids to “drive” (right).

 

 

 

Plus, they had a drop slide which Logan went down several times with Jake’s help.  (Drop slides are nearly vertical at the top.  It’s not so much sliding really, as dropping and letting the slide catch you, or, in Logan’s case, having Daddy drop you.)

Hydration is important on hot Oki days full of busy play!

For our anniversary we went out to a nice Thai restaurant located directly underneath the ferris wheel.

Yes, we had Logan with us for our anniversary—our babysitter was in the States.  (We had friends offer but we didn’t really have any plans until the last minute.)  So, on the way up to the ferris wheel, we stopped at the arcade and let him run around for a few minutes.  It also killed time while we were waiting for sunset.

Happy anniversary (7 years) to us!

Sunset view with the lights of the ferris wheel just coming on.

Ancient Egyptian maternity costume for VBS. I had 32-36 kindergarten and first graders and a handful of assistants.  It was a very good but VERY exhausting week.

We’re up to last weekend and the Futenma Flightline Festival.  Logan actually didn’t enjoy this as much as we thought he would; he seemed a little intimidated by the planes and helicopters up close. 

Still, he did sit in a few cockpits, climbed on a few trucks . . .

and enjoyed one of those swinging boat rides.

Which brings us to today: Logan and I found a new beach, Toguchi beach.  It was low tide when we arrived, so you could walk out on top of the coral for a LONG ways and see all sorts of interesting things. 

Even though most of the shells were occupied (darn hermit crabs!), Logan and I still had a great time hunting for “treasure” and exploring the wildlife.

There was also a playground at this beach and another really cool section of beach and rock arches/caves, but unfortunately I left my camera in my beach bag back at the playground while we were exploring that section.  I’m sure we’ll be back again sometime though, and I’ll show it to you then!  Until then, I hope are enjoying a few moments of relaxation here and there, and enjoying your various families/friends.  Talk to you later!

A Hiking We Will Go

So, still playing catch up a little bit, this was a couple weeks ago when we decided to venture beyond the beaches and try a bit more hiking.  The trail is called (at least by Americans) the Yamada Stone Bridge trail and it was a nice, moderate hike with lots of wildlife and a couple other interesting things to see along the way.  Unfortunately we missed the part of the trail with the spectacular views, but we’ll go back and get that another time.

Logan and Jake standing on the edge of the stone bridge for which the trail is named.  The bridge itself is really rather impressive, being remarkably old, verging on ancient, and still standing quite firm.  The drop-off on one side of the bridge (the side in the picture) is significantly greater than on the other side—no, you can’t see the bottom in the picture.

Just a random shot that I liked.  It was a beautiful day but it was HOT; it was tolerable walking in the shade but even then we were sweating a good bit.

Like I said, we missed the section of the trail that is supposed to have the best views, but what we did see was hardly bad!

And what this section of trail lacked in views, it made up for in other ways, like the caves that Jake got to check out (they were rather inaccessible for Logan and my pregnant self).  There were two smalls shrines down in the cave and an underground water source that Jake could here but not see. 
(Note to self: bring flashlight next time!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were several tombs, and nearby there was this naturally occurring “altar” (above) which was surrounded by prayer plaques (right) and offering boxes.

 

  But mostly what we saw were these.

       
And these.

  And some of these as well.

Oh, and this guy too.  In fact, there were butterflies and dragonflies pretty much swarming around us the entire time we were on the trail.  They were beautiful to watch, and much nicer than flies and mosquitoes!

  We stopped at the same bridge on the way back to grab some lunch.  (Nope, still can’t see the bottom.)

Yumm!

And all in all, we had another great adventure!  (But if you look close you can see the sweat on our clothing, particularly mine.)

Hope all your adventures are successful and fun!  Thanks for reading!