Exploring Naha (Fukushu-en, Naminoue & Kinjocho)

One of our first adventures in 2008 was to head south to Naha city (the capital & largest city, by population, of both the island & prefecture). We had heard about several attractions that sounded like excellent places to relax & sight-see. So we spent a lovely first Saturday of 2008 exploring first the west side of Naha. Since we had not brought our real camera along for the ride (hey, it happens to the best intentioned adventurer, right?), all of our photos were taken with our Toshiba camera phones, which thankfully sport a CMOS 3MP sensor for decent sized (& reasonable quality) shots.

Our first stop was the lovely Fukushu-en Garden. This garden was officially opened to the public in 1992 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of international friendship ties between Naha City and Fuzhou City in China. This genuine Chinese garden was built using materials from Fuzhou and with techniques unique to that city.

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From there we walked to the nearby Naminoue-gu Shrine, which is adjacent to (well, overlooking really) Naminoue Beach. The beach is located on the west side of the Wakasa Seaside Park, and is the only beach in Naha City. Former head of the Eight Shrines of Okinawa, the shrine is located on top of a precipice. An old shrine dedicated to the Buddha incarnate of the three shrines of Kumano, it had a devout following during the Ryukyu kingdom era. Rebuilt after being reduced to ash in the war, this shrine was reconstructed in 1998. We were privileged to witness the first shrine visit of the year for many locals (a very special occasion, on the level of Christmas festivities for Christian westerners).

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After that we drove around to the east side to find the old Kinjo-cho stone pavement, a 300m long road that leads to Shuri Castle from the southwest.

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Christmas Day festivities in Okinawa? Snorkelling!!

Was Christmas any different in Okinawa than what we're used to in our previous western hemisphere previous holidays? A lot of the SOFA community focuses on the warmth, which is definitely hard to find in North America, but since our childhoods were more tropical, the warmth is only so-so here. Yes, the boys (John, Jordan & Josh) went outside to frolick in the sunshine with new toys after waking up to see what Santa brought us, while the awesome gals (Jane, Jessica & Betsy) slaved away on an awesome Christmas dinner. After that things got a little less typical for us. Early in the afternoon we loaded up the van & headed up to the Maeda Point (Maeda-misaki) in search of some good diving or snorkelling. Unfortunately, the winds & surf weren't cooperating with diving conditions that day. So we spent the gorgeous afternoon doing some fantastic snorkelling at nearby Maeda Flats. It was a bit reminiscent of the Murphy members' childhood Christmas days in the Caribbean, but this time we had an underwater camera & wetsuits (to keep us from shivering). All 6 of us got into the action (even Jordan) & saw lots of colorful underwater life. Then after that, right around sunset, we checked out nearby Cape Zampa (Zanpa-misaki) & the very photogenic lighthouse, walking trail & lookout point nearby. That part (traipsing around a lighthouse in shorts & flip-flops) was a new Christmas activity for all of us. ;-) It was indeed a merry Christmas!

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Diving off the Sunabe Junkyard

For their 2nd ocean dive ever (the day after their first), Jane & John were introduced to the other end of the Sunabe sea wall, near the junkyard. The tide was pretty low (read: below comfort level) so the snorkel out was semi-exhausting (thanks, John, for safely transporting the camera for us). But after that intro was completed, the only bad thing was that the camera battery hadn't been recharged from the previous day's diving, so very few shots were captured of the area's lush coral scenery. The exit was actually even tougher since the tide was even lower so we actually did more coral walking (with very heavy gear in tow) than snorkelling. :-(

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Jane & John's First Ocean Dive

On my siblings' 2nd full day of their 2-week visit over the Christmas holidays, we took them on their first ever SCUBA dive in salt water! That's right, no more frigid fresh-water North American rock quarry. ;-) Having been recently certified in Birmingham, Alabama (at our suggestion) before coming to visit us here in the coral-reef-diving wonderland that is Okinawa, Jane & John were ready to see what they'd been missing. We chose the very novice-friendly & nearby Sunabe Water Treatment Plant location (at the southern end of that section of the sea wall) as the first destination. Unfortunately, it was fairly overcast (the day before having been absolutely spectacular, of course) & the visibility down under wasn't the finest, but the newbies had a great first dive (unlike the photographer, Josh, whose "new" but very used BCD just refused to hold onto his tank). Things were really fine with the dive until a surface brought us to the realization that conditions below were better than above, where we left Brittany & Jordan, who had become miserable once the rains started & our misplaced van keys were nowhere to be found. Before John & Josh thoroughly demolished the driver door trying to break in, the astute neighbor who received our misplaced keys in her bag returned them to us, having seen our plight from her nearby apartment. And before too much longer the ordeal was done & we made a few adjustments in our future planning (so as not to repeat such potential disaster). Sorry again, Jordan & Brittany!

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Couchsurfers, Part II (Checking out Ie Jima & enjoying "Pizza In The Sky")

Our couchsurfing friends, Jo & Brendan, returned to stay with us for a few more days, after a few weeks in mainland Japan & before heading back to Taiwan for several more weeks. And we were able to spend another lovely day showing them around our beautiful island home a bit more.

So we took them to a place we've been wanting to check out ourselves for quite some time, Ie Jima, a small island just west of Okinawa, off of Motobu Peninsula. After the short ferry ride over, we had a lovely time exploring by bicycle (which we rented for 1000 yen for the day). We were surprised to find that our 4.5 hrs (between ferries) did not afford enough time to see quite every sight that we wanted to.

We first found the Monument of Hokon & its adjacent park. It was a welcome first "catch-our-breath" break, being at the top of a rather steep hill. Then we made our way to the base of the prominent Mount Gusuku (shaped like a volcano), where we parked our bicycles & began climbing stairs. We first arrived at the mid observation deck & gift shop building. After a few minutes looking around, we made the hike to the top, which was only about 15 minutes of stair climbing. The views from atop the peak were wonderful. By the time we descended we were ready for some lunch, so we rode our bikes back into the town. Finding a COOP grocery store & a Hot Spar convenience store, we purchased some tasty food & settled down at a table in a little park nearby to enjoy it. Next, we decided to bike along the southern coast in search of the Niya-thiya Cave, where 1000 local people sought refuge during WWII bombings. We passed the Ernie Pyle Memorial park & inspected the monument to the US war correspondent who was killed there during WWII. Then we stopping along GI Beach, where we thought the cave should be. We explored several smaller caves & crevasses before deciding that we must not have gone quite far enough. And true to that suspicion, about 100 meters further on down the road, we found the very well-marked stairs leading down to the entrance of the large cave & it's legendary stone of power (which legend holds will assist a woman in becoming pregnant, if she lifts it; none in our group were allowed to attempt the lifting). Then, with only had a few minutes to play with before needing to be back at the port to return the bikes & board the ferry, we rode to Nishizaki fishing port nearby & stared down from the piers into the crystal clear waters at the sea life below. We did capture a few photos & video of some interesting fish out of water on a concrete pylon. And then it was a speedy bike ride back along the coast to Ie Port for the last returning ferry of the day at 4pm.

Once safely back on Okinawa around 4:30pm, we made our way to our favorite pizza joint, Cafe Kajinho (or "Pizza In The Sky," as the ex-pat community here fondly refers to it). There we had some wonderful views of the sunset skies & of course, some delicious pizza, salad & drinks.

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SCUBA Diving Just Got Even Better!

We love getting to delight in one of our favorite parts about living where we currently do - SCUBA diving!! It's especially fun when we try a new location or see new sights or have new toys to play with. So for our first experience aboard Captain Mark's "Sea Lady IV", we were delighted with several new things. A new place was introduced in the way of the very vibrant corals at "Ammo" (aka "Mark's") Reef, not far out from the western shore of Okinawa, about halfway between Kadena Marina & Araha Beach (straight out from Sunabe "Junkyard," sort of). The name is derived from the WWII ammunitions still seen from time-to-time in the area (hopefully never handled in any way by divers that see them) or from one of the few boat captains that knows about it (if you prefer the latter of the names presented). It was indeed pristine (relative to the popular spots right up against the same shore that we've frequented over the past year). It was also our first dive with our new dive camera (SeaLife DC500 with an external flash) which isn't actually new to the ocean but it's new to US! We purchased it from one of Betsy's coworkers that is moving back Stateside in a few short weeks. We went a little nuts taking photos in our 50-min dive (these are all from the first of our 2 dives of the day, because we exhausted the battery & about 2/3 of the memory card in that short time span). But we got some fantastic shots (& some half-decent that I probably should have deleted but didn't)!!

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Our second (unphotographed) dive of the day turned out to be our first night dive. We did not plan it that way but fortunately at least 1 diver decided not to go down so he loaned us his awesome UK HID dive light (costs over $200 which is a lot for a flashlight, y'all!). So yeah, we're now officially spoiled for life on choice of lights, but boy, was night-diving cool. I bogarted the light so poor Betsy just held my hand & had to either look where I was aiming it or stare into darkness. It was so cool to see the same reef area before & after dark. You can really concentrate on the details at night. We saw an awesome pink stonefish & bright red shrimp (under a ledge) & multi-colored eel (medium sized) protruding with his mouth agape. We're definitely looking forward to getting our Advanced certification (probably soon after we buy much cheaper dive lights) & maybe a few free specialty certs!

P.S. Thanks to Kadena Marina's free specialty course of the month promotion (sponsored by PADI), Betsy & I are now also enriched air (aka nitrox) certified. It happened just 2 days after this day of diving, so we're anxious to get out & try a new gas! Yippeee!!!

Turkey Day - Okinawa Style

Since we were too lazy & tired of other recent travels to take advantage of the long weekend to plan & take a trip (although we should have, we now realize in 20/20 hindsight), we are more than happy to report that we had a very lovely Thanksgiving holiday with several good friends. And we did the American traditions grand honor, being very thankful for the feast that we assembled & attempted to consume. We had some great food, including a 20+ lb turkey & sides (purchased from our friendly MCCS - I think it was prepared at Camp Foster's Globe & Anchor club) as well as numerous home-made items that different people contributed. We definitely ate more than we should have allowed ourselves to (continuing that tradition). And we didn't just enjoy the food on Thanksgiving Day itself but also for several days after!

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One of our favorite Thanksgiving companions was 18-month-old Cayce. Here's a fun video of her digging into some cool whip after we enjoyed leftovers 2 days after Thanksgiving: The main objective (well, besides watching her make a mess) was getting her to say "Hi, Grampa!" We thoroughly enjoyed her version:

We Are CouchSurfer Hosts!

We recently opened up our humble abode to some very fun guests that we met via couchsurfing.com (a site that matches up travel hounds like ourselves with each other to overcome some of the travel industry's high prices). A lovely couple hailing from Australia (formerly of Sydney, soon to be Melbourne) flew in from Taiwan (where they'd been visiting her family). And we were happy to meet them at the airport & provide about 4 nights of lodging during the last full week of November (since we hadn't made travel plans for the Thanksgiving holiday for some reason). Most days they were forced (or chose, or a combination of both) to fend for themselves (walking or bussing or renting a car).

But on their last day with us, we were finally able to spend a full day discovering Okinawa with Jo & Brendan. Discovering a day that began cloudy/drizzly/windy but became sunny & clear, we drove out to east-central side of the island, across the peninsula in Uruma. We explored the ruins of Katsuren Castle before venturing onto the bridge out to Henza Island. We then explored coasts, shrines & caves on Hamahiga Island before continuing on to Ikei Island's Big Time Resort coast. After finding an afternoon snack on Ikei, we drove back to Miyagi & along some of the less-popular roads (as evidenced by the vegetation covering a lane or more). We eventually discovered the park & lookout pavilions at Ato Gusuku Observatory, before leisurely making our way back to Okinawa Island & into Naha to find the Shinko Port.

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Yaeyama Islands: Delights Await Ye Nature-Lovers

After arriving on Ishigaki (main island of the Yaeyama group, due east of Taiwan), catching a bus into town, settling in at the comfy guest house (where we found communication most convenient via translation services from a friend that we phoned), we slowly realized that our Japanese mastery or lack thereof (especially written comprehension, which is not far above 0% fluency) was not going to be nearly as forgivable in the Yaeyama-shoto as it often is here on Okinawa. And since there were quite a few activities we were interested in taking part in during our long weekend (3 nights) there, we decided to seek some assistance & spend a bit more money than we normally allow ourselves to. So we booked a tour thru Hirata Tours at the nearby ferry port for Saturday, called an English speaking dive shop to set up some SCUBA diving for Sunday & decided to only chance our partial day on Monday to our own fallible communication skills. After those plans were made, we followed a lovely walking tour (printed from a website) of the main town before finding a delicious dinner at Yuna, across the street from our guesthouse.

On our first full day, we embarked on a day tour to Iriomote Island which included round trip ferries from Ishigaki, bus transportation on Iriomote, boat trip up the Urauchi-kawa, hike to the Maryudo falls, delicious resort lunch, star-sand hunting/gathering, & a wooden cart pulled by water buffalo to tiny Yubu-jima for a scenic stroll about the gardens. Though it certainly wasn't cheap, it sure was easy to do more than we could probably have figured out on our own & we thoroughly enjoyed each part of that was included. Dinner back on Ishigaki that night consisted of some yummy bento box food we found from a local vendor in town.

We did some SCUBA diving on Sunday, finding a dive shop in Kabira that could handle our language needs (Umicoza). Unfortunately, the Manta Scramble location (famous for regular year-round sightings of awesome, huge Manta Rays) was too choppy for the dive boat to visit, so we had to settle for 2 dives in different areas that boasted coral reef life in Nagura Bay. It was quite lovely, but not terribly different from what we witness around Okinawa Island. Still, our very knowledgeable divemaster (Satoki-san) showed us quite a few things we'd never seen before (arrow crabs, jawfish, etc), often using his underwater flashlights to illuminate places normally concealed to our view. Also provided by Umicoza was a delicious lunch of curry, rice, spaghetti & salad (very nice after diving). After getting dropped back off at the guest house in town that afternoon, we quickly realized that not bringing our AAA-issued international driving permits would be preventing us from rental of any motor-powered vehicle(s), so instead we rented bicycles to get in a few hours of riding across the southern coastline (great sunset views & monuments & a small lighthouse). On our way back, before returning the bikes, we happened to see a fresh seafood shop & purchased some fresh fish sashimi which we paired with some bento food from a Hot Spar store near our guest house.

On Monday we awoke to bright, gorgeous weather (the clearest of our days there) & ferried over to Taketomi-jima, where we rented bicycles (highly recommended) to see the island's beaches, typical Ryukyu village architecture, shrines & historical sights. In only 3-1/2 hours we found that we had seen basically all of the small island's very interesting scenery & we docked back on Ishigaki-jima JUST in time (i.e. 30 min before time was up) for a DELICIOUS lunch buffet at the Chisun Hotel. We even had enough time to leisurely stroll with our backpacks from the ferry port to the airport instead of taking the bus! ;-)

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Our longest bike ride so far

Since Betsy has only a 2-hr workday on Fridays, we decided to spend one lovely Friday doing some bike riding around the island. So we charted a course we'd been considering for a while, over to the Pacific (east) coast of the island, then south along the coast & back across the steep ridges that run north & south. We included a lunch stop at a buffet that we'd read good things about (lots of sushi!). The route we followed is available if you CLICK HERE.

Basically, it was a big loop along roads we'd driven several times but never ridden. Only 3 of our 4 total tires survived in an "able to contain air" state. But Josh didn't let a flat front tire keep him from riding his free bike (found on the side of the road beside other large trash items on "large trash items" day) without an inflated front tire (the tube has since been replaced & feels just as good, which isn't that good, as it ever did). It was a good workout & great fun besides! And we even remembered to snap a few photos!

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