June 2013 Monthly Recap

I feel like I've been getting busier and busier, which makes me really glad I started this monthly recap.  Although it doesn't cover everything we've done, it's a good little summary if I haven't gotten a lot of posts in throughout the month.  Aaron has stayed busy with work, and we've gotten a lot done around the house.  We've I gotten a lot more plants, which is a chore in itself to maintain all of them, but they make me happy.  We've also been doing a bunch of wood working projects which I'll share at some point.  We made our own end-grain checker pattern cutting board, our own 6 foot long floating shelf, and a console table behind our couch.  It's finally starting to feel cozy here.  Below are some other things that have been keeping us busy.

One of the bases here held a flightline fair with lots of planes on display for sofa status folks and locals to climb in, take pictures, and ask questions about the planes that are stationed here.  I finally got an up close and personal tour of Aarons tanker.  In typical Kacey style, I climbed all over everything had to get a picture of me in the pilot seat pretending to fly and then laying in the boom pod.  While he worked the fair, I climbed in and out of every osprey, helo, and cargo I could.  More pictures in a future post.  It was pretty neat to see all the locals wanting to learn about everything and how grateful they were that we are here.  

This next picture blows my mind every time I think about it. I've known Aaron nearly 16 years or so, and never EVER once have I seen him eat a pancake like this before now.  Hell, I've never seen anyone eat a pancake like this.  He hollowed it out and poured syrup completely in it.  By the way, these were the best pancakes ever....brown butter is the secret!!!

People ask us a lot of there are weird bugs or rodents here.  From my experience, I'd say not really.  We experienced tons of bugs in Florida, and here I would just say that there are A LOT more of them.  EVERYWHERE.  There's definitely a larger variety of spiders.  And then there's this guy who's been hanging out on our recycle bin for a while.

I dropped a friend off at the airport a few weeks ago and decided to take advantage of my trip south.  I got lost and found some new neighborhoods, and then headed to the Itoman Farmers Market which is now my favorite market to go to here, but a trek from our house. There is one huge building of fruit and produce, one building of fish, one building of restaurants and gift things, a garden center, and a handful of food stands.  I bought myself a couple of the largest oysters I've ever seen, they were shucked and wrapped up in ice for me to go.  I drove down to the southern most cape of the island and ate my oysters on the cliffs with this view.  How is this even my life?!?!?! Seriously...it's just a normal Wednesday.

While I personally didn't care to see the headliner American pop band that played here last weekend, I was curious about the turnout and how the base put on this type of all day music festival.  It was pretty freaking professional, I was impressed. And I couldn't believe how many people there there. It was insane to see that many people on base, never mind that many Americans in one place in Japan.  I couldn't get enough of the sunset, and left shortly after it set.

I've been trying to get some volunteer hours under my belt, and am still in the process of applying through different places.  I'm officially a volunteer with the USO - which just reminded me that I need to pick up my volunteer appreciation certificate!!! Earlier this month I volunteered at 6am to set up a tent and grills and whip up hundreds of pancakes for the runners of a 5k.  It was a lot of fun and everyone was super nice, so I've already signed up for future events.

I was really excited that I got to dog-sit for 2 labs for a few days. It made me miss Bosco a whole bunch, but it felt good to be appreciated by a Labrador for a while.  Those of you with labs know exactly what I mean.

We spent a hot day up north and hiked Hiji Falls.  Bring lots of water, there are 5 million stairs.

Spelling gone wrong.  Cantion = caution and an undocumented wraning = warning.

We've got bullfighting here in Okinawa, and it's a little different that what you probably think.  This time, there are bulls fighting each other.  The first one to chicken out and turn to run away loses.  Trainers are there to encourage the bulls to stay mad and against one another.  It was really awesome to go to a local event like this.  I'd like to do a post on it soon.

Oh! Here's a picture of me going wood shopping.  This is for our console table.  Do you have any idea how awkward it is to put a 10 ft board in a itsy-bitsy car (that is NOT 10ft long) all by yourself in the tiniest parking space ever while chasing down your lumber cart as the wind whips it around the parking lot?  It's awkward.  I'm surprised no one stopped me with it sticking out the window.

One of the most exciting this I did this month happened just this past Sunday.  We went deep sea fishing with  some friends about 3 hours off the coast of Okinawa.  Our boat of 10 people caught about 70 fish, mostly Yellowfin Tuna and Skipjack Tuna.  This is one of the smaller tunas, on average they were 2-2.5 feet long.  Someone on the boat caught a 70lb tuna on a drift line and a 3.5ft wahoo while trolling.  It was a crazy long day, being on the boat for about 11 hours, but it was so much fun and I'm such a happy girl seeing all of the fish in my freezer.  Oh man, the amount of raw tuna we've consumed the past few days is probably criminal.  So amazing.

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Toguchi Beach - Okinawa, Japan

It didn't take us too long to find a beach to explore.  Actually, it took us about a week, which really surprised me I didn't insist on going to one much, much sooner, but we were really so busy.  I guess that's what happens when you move to another country.  

Toguchi beach isn't too far away from our house, only about 6 miles, it still takes about 20 minutes due to traffic, slow speed limits, and insanely tiny roads to navigate and squeeze multiple cars through.  When you first arrive at the parking lot, there is a cafe (which we haven't tried yet) and a playground.  The playgrounds are different here, with cement slides and roller slides!  There were a bunch of families playing the day we went, so of course we avoided them and photos.  But I do want to go down the roller slide, so you'll get photos eventually.  Just past the playground are walking paths to the beach and some really nice picnic pavilions.

And something that made my day...seeing 2 cats playing on the beach.  You can see this guy running off with something in his mouth.  Cats are everywhere in Japan.  Literally, everywhere.  Some of them are in rough condition, but others are pretty cute and it's hard to remember that they are wild.

The tide was low when we arrived, and we saw many fishermen standing waaay out in the water, and families out harvesting seaweed.

There are numerous caves here, like on most of the island, and the rock formations are beautiful.

 

This beach is on the west side of the island, the East China Sea.

This photo doesn't show it, but the island is also COVERED in coral. Coral, coral EVERYWHERE!!!

Shrines and large tombs can be found everywhere on the island, on business property, on the side of the road, in peoples yards, and on base.  It'll be interesting to learn more about them.

Along the path are multiple places to stop and rest, and small yet beautiful picnic pavilions. This one here is way out on a point overlooking the sea.

On the other side of the parking lot, there is another walking path, stairs to the water, and different levels of grass to sit on and enjoy the outdoors.  See that big rock way in the back in the photo below?  Just past there is a quiet beach with finer sand and places to enjoy the water.

Here's some families out in the tidal pools collection sea weed and other things.

Oh, and don't take the hermit crabs!!!

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Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium

The weekend we arrived on the island, it was an American holiday weekend, so we went to the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium that Monday with our friends KayCee, Jake, and Kaylee.  They hadn't been there yet, so it was a great exploration for all of us.  We thought since it was still a work day for Japan, it wouldn't be busy, but I felt like every person on the island was there!  Even so, we were still able to see a ton of things and take some great pictures, and I know we all want to go back!

The aquarium is one of the largest in the world, one of the few that have multiple whale sharks in captivity, and the first aquarium to successfully reproduce manta rays.  It's definitely one of the main attractions on the island, and after being here once, we know why.  We ended up buying season passes, which pays for itself in 2 visits, and it's a good thing we did.  I don't think we were able to see even half of the exhibits on this day, and it's just over an hour away, so we'll be able to come a lot.

There is more than just an aquarium here, it's a whole park/village.  You park above everything which overlooks the ocean, and as you walk down 23909 (or so) flights of stairs, there are beautiful gardens and flower displays everywhere!  Literally walls and walls of flowers and plants.

Ocean themed plant displays!

 These guys were my favorite!
But it wasn't just flower and plant displays.  They have a dolphin theater (we caught the end of a show, you'll see below), Sea Turtle pools, Manatee pools, Arboretums, Oceanic Culture Museum, restaurants, and more.

Walls and walls of orchids everywhere!

I can't even imagine the amount of time, work, and money that goes into these displays.  They were endless, everywhere you turned, more flowers!!!

Once you actually make it to the Aquarium, which takes quite a while going down all the levels, looking at all the flowers, and taking pictures, there are even more photo ops and activities you can participate in before actually paying.

After we got our photos taken for our annual passes, we headed straight in and pet some starfish and other safe-to-handle creatures.  I think Aaron really liked this part.  I took his picture and walked away, and when I turned around, he was still petting things.

For a while, it was a pretty standard aquarium, different displays for different fish, a bunch of larger tanks with varieties of fish, etc.  It was really nice that everything was both in Japanese and English, so we were actually able to read and learn about the local sea life.  That's were I focused my time on, reading about and watching the local creatures.

Of course, I forgot exactly what everything was called... so I'll just call these water snakes 'creepers', because let's face it...that's exactly what they are.

My favorite though are the squid of course.  They were quite popular with everyone else also, so I didn't stay too long watching these guys float around.

But just long enough to get a few shots in.

The main exhibit was next, and it was pretty freaking cool.  I wish I was able to take better pictures, but either my little p&s camera doesn't like dark places or I don't know how to adjust the setting properly or a combo of both, but KayCee got some amazing shots with her DSRL, so maybe I could borrow some from her to show you (*hint *hint KayCee if you're reading this!).

So...if you don't know why it's so awesome that we saw a whale shark here it's because they are fucking enormous.  They are the largest known fish, and only around 15 or so are in captivity in the world.  They average 30 feet in length and weigh about 9 tons.  There isn't a whole lot known about them yet, no one has every seen a whale shark mate or give birth (they can carry 300 pups at once!), so having them in captivity is a pretty big deal.

In the same tank (which is so large you can barely call it a tank), they have giant manta rays, which are beautiful.  The 'wing span' on these are around 20 feet wide, and it was amazing to see them swim along the glass.

Speaking of the glass, they had a little display about this tank that held a handful of mantas and the whale sharks.  After all, it is curious how they build something to sustain all of that.  This one large tank (Kuroshio Sea) holds nearly 2 million gallons of water, and has a glass panel 27'x74' long!  The glass is an incredible 2 feet thick! Another cool thing about the aquarium is that all of the water is pumped in from the ocean, 300m offshore.  They pump in the new water, filter it into the tanks, filter it out of the tanks and back into the ocean.  The aquarium also generates 4 times more of its own power than it uses commercially.  Totally worth the 3,600 Yen ($39.15).

We finished off our day at the aquarium with the last few minutes of the dolphin show.  It was pretty impressive with a variety of dolphins and the ocean right behind.  It'll be nice to go again to watch the whole show.

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