A New Friend!

Aaron & Masayo had an old friend (from a previous life in Japan's Nara Prefecture) in town visiting from California. Betsy & I thoroughly enjoyed meeting & getting to know Mike. After a yummy onigiri lunch at our place, we tried to go kayaking around the sea wall's Kadena Steps, but we found out that the 400W auto power converter doesn't provide enough juice for our electric inflater pump. Thus, the inflatable kayaks remained deflated. So Aaron & Mike had fun snorkeling instead while Masayo, Betsy & I just relaxed on the stone steps (Kadena Marina was out of rental gear for us to have enough for all 5 of us to jump in at the same time). That evening we had a very delicious cold Somen noodle dinner prepared by Masayo at our place, before we played a rousing game of , boys vs girls. It was a fun day!

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Playing with Eddie

We've grown quite close to some neighbors in our building, especially their 5 yr old son Eddie. We play with him & sometimes supervise him when his parents need us to, such as this day when Genean was out of town & Jay had to work late.

After Josh picked Eddie up from kindergarten, they played at the park right next to the school for a while. Then after a refreshing popsicle from an off-base convenience store, Josh introduced Eddie to Tobaru park in Chatan's "heights" (between hwys 23 & 24). The clouds were a bit dark but the views from the park's observatory combined with the fun that Eddie (& Josh) had playing on the slides & ropes more than made up for it!

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A LOOOOONG video of 5 yr old Eddie going up (the wrong way) & then down (the right way) on the big roller slide: After exhausting themselves there, they then proceeded to play on the teeter totter & small stream/pond at nearby Jagaru Park, that is, until Eddie decided he wanted to be soaking wet after getting a drink from a faucet & subsequently began chasing Josh around with a water bottle. That finished off their energy & made them head for home for some yummy veggie burgers!

Snorkeling off the middle of the Sunabe sea wall

2 snorkeling excursions in 1 week & both times with a charged dive camera & memory card? Unprecedented!

It was an overcast day but it was nice enough that the sea wall was pretty crowded. Being a holiday weekend probably factored into the crowd also. Usually does here in Okinawa. If people don't have to work they're out & about, like we are! ;-) Normally we've snorkelled & dived off Sunabe's sea wall at one end or the other (either "Water Treatment Plant" or "Junkyard", now really "Dirt Lot"), but we decided it was time to check out the underwater life thriving around the wall's midsection (several dive shops operate around there & we often see the groups trekking over the wall & across the shallow reef top.

We got a few good shots in: We also captured a bunch of short videos of this excursion (basically, Josh chased a lot of fish & tried to capture the experience for others to appreciate):

** Note: the music wasn't playing quite that loudly & clearly underwater. YouTube has a cool new AudioSwap feature that let us add the sound tracks instead of the silence that we captured. ;-)

Restaurant: Kastamandap - tasting Nepalese deliciousness!

One of our favorite restaurants (both on Okinawa & in the world) just got a little write-up in this week's edition of Stripes Okinawa (the free weekly advertising supplement published by Stars & Stripes). Here's a post with the full copy of the review (several restaurants included; Kastamandap is merely the first):

"Beach strip serves up tasty culinary diversity"

We live a couple of blocks from the strip described in the article so we often find ourselves there for some food when we don't feel like preparing our own. And it's hard for us to resist Kastamandap's incredible curries & scrumptious naan bread (I guess some people might choose the rice option but we consider that, well, just wrong!). We've been meaning to write up an experience of this restaurant (by itself, not merely as part of a larger experience with friends or family) but at the same time, the place is tiny & we like getting a table when we want one. So now that the word's out anyway, we'll show some public love & let everyone know where we go get our curry fix!