Ryukyu

Yep. So much for not going back to Okinawa. I found myself on that muggy, humid island once again this week. I am already on my way home, but thought I would post the few pics I have.

This is the eternal red light. The green arrows below the red go off and on, but the red one stays lit no matter what, even if you have a straight green arrow. Hilarious.

I stayed in Mark's house and discovered how cool moving walls are. Those dividers can all slide out of the way, so that make this a 1, 2 or 3 bedroom apartment. Sweet.

Finally, we found this awesome Korean bbq place. Well, Mark found it. $20 - All you can eat raw meet (to cook at your table), soda and ice cream. Nice.

Well, I have to go get on a plane, so more later.

Oh yeah, the title. Ryukyu is the name of the chain of island of which Okinawa is one. FYI.

Okinawa, AGAIN

So I will be honest. I don't know what to do with my blog. As this type of blogging evolves I am feeling more and more out of place. It is like I am sitting in one of my wife's scrap booking parties.

Nevertheless, here I am. I have pictures I want to share, and sometimes I just like to write. Maybe I should try writing in my journal? But where is the fun in that. No one leaves comments in my journal. Of course, no one leaves comments here either.

ANYWAY... So I went to Okinawa again, presumably for the last time. I have a bunch of pictures I thought I would share from that, so here goes.

This is a cup of cold fizzy green goodness called Melon Soda. I will admit that I got melon soda every chance I got. I highly recommend it.

And what is this? Oh it was my dinner. And what am I holding in my chopsticks? (check out my chopstick skills by the way!!) Oh that is just a little chunk of squid tentacle. Did I eat it? Yes I did. Was it good? No it was not. It was like trying to chew on a chunk of rubber bike tire. A slightly fishy bike tire. So I avoided the rest of those little guys. The soup was still good.

So we went to the beach at sunset one day, not because we thought the beach would be nice at sunset, but because it was the only one-hour break we took in a 16 hour+ workday. There were these little white crabs skittering all over the beach. You couldn't even walk 10 feet without them scattering underneath your flip flops. Rex had a nice strategy for catching them. He threw sand on one of the bigger one and then picked up the handful of sand, then the crab crawled out of the sand and onto him. It was dark, so the pictures weren't that great, but this is one of the better ones.

Yes. I am a dork.

I have a cheap, low-quality camera that I have been trying to squeeze every bit of value out of, and part of that effort is playing with the different pre-set shooting modes. This one didn't turn out to bad I think.
This one as well.

So as we left the beach we found this very eloquent sign. I hope you can read it.

This was my sweet ride while in OKA. A Nissan March. I would totally buy one of these. It is a fun little car with a 1000 cc engine and a decent stereo. Too bad they don't sell them in the US.

This is the decent stereo. It is awesome because it also has built in GPS AND a digital TV tuner. So why can't you see it? Because everytime I changed environments everything fogs up, thanks to the humidity. This is called my camera lens fogged up!

Phew. That's better. This is my unfogged sweet in-dash TV. The bad news: all of the options were in Japanese so we had a hard time working it. In the end I think I accidently erased all of the music that was stored on it. Whoops. It also had this annoying feature where the screen turned off if I went more than 5 Kph. It made stop lights a lot more fun though.

This is Jason and I waiting for an awesome dinner at the Four Seasons. The entertaining chefs weren't that entertaining, but the steak was totally awesome!

This is Mark and I at an authentic Japanese restaurant. Yes I am not wearing any shoes because we had to take them off at the door, and I am sitting on a hardwood floor so I can eat at a table that is all of 16 inches off the floor. We couldn't read the menu and there weren't any pictures, so we were lucky that Rex and Haekyung were there to help us order. I learned that in most places like this I can ask for tankatsu, which you can see in front of me. It is like Kentucky Fried Greasy Pork with a yummy oriental BBQ sauce. It usually comes with a cabbage salad on the side and, of course, rice.

So that is all I have at the moment. A few fun pics. There are a few other posts coming up, so come back soon!