Okinawa

For my birthday treat I went to Okinawa for four days with some friends. It is a small island off the south of Japan, and even though it is snowing here, it is still 28oC down there, so it was beautiful.

We were a little concerned about the weather forecast, as it predicted rain the whole time, and as we were sitting in the restaurant eating breakfast and watching the rain run in torrents down the window, we were a little apprehensive. But, we are British and a little rain never stopped us. We got the brollies and the anoraks and headed off into the storm.

Our first stop was a castle, which also has this gate which is on the 2000yen note, so quite famous. I'm sure it is also famous for other stuff too, but I don't know what that is. Luckily by the time we had re-formulated our plan five times to account for the weather before deciding it wasn't going to stop raining and we should just stick with the original schedule, it had stopped anyway.

After the castle we headed to a Chinese garden. Having forgotten the guide book, we actually went to a different slightly less impressive garden, but nice none the less. The we ate dinner in a cafe run by a slightly eccentric Italian man. It turned out that we were just next to the university which was having it's festival open day, so we had a wander round there. We narrowly escaped going to a ecology lecture when Mike's "eigo?" (do you speak English?), was mistaken for "eco?", had a quick look at a photo exhibit and then were on our way.

Next on the agenda were some caves with a golden waterfall. This was in a place called "Okinawa Land", which was just one big tourist trap, but we happily handed over wodges of cash and headed into the depths. The cave did have impressive stalactites and stalagmites, but the waterfall was rather measly and so a bit disappointing. Half way round it suddenly turned into a disco with blue lights lining the walls and the music started and we turn a corner to be confronted with something from Santa's wonder land. I have never seen so much electricity so close to so much water. A very tacky death-defying experience. Only in Japan...or maybe America?

We emerged from the caves on the other side of Okinawa land and then had to go through corporate world to get back to the car park. On the way we drank snake essence wine, played with traditional toys, ate sugar and potato icecream, and even had a chance to do print club! Maybe the highlight was us trying to make our own Shisas (click here to see what they should look like)



On the second day we visited the pineapple park and rode around in little pineapple cars and fought a school tour party over the cake samples in the shop. We also went to the beach and the aquarium. Luckily this day was very sunny indeed. Sadly we timed out for going to the underwater observatory, but after the aqarium had already seen a bit too much sea life anyway.