Peace Prayer Park & Itoman Lights

The day after Christmas we wanted to head down south to see the display of Christmas lights at Itoman. Since that obviously didn't start until it was dark outside, we decided to make a day of it and also go to Peace Prayer Park, which was just down the road.

The memorial grounds were beautiful, right on the coast. They refer to the WWII Battle of Okinawa as the "Typhoon of Steel," where upwards of 200,000 people were killed.

These memorials had names of both the Japanese and Americans who died in the battle.

Of course, we had to look for family names.

Syd was a good sport. I think her favorite part was wearing her kitty cat hat.

Sydney was cracking me up when we were taking this picture. With each one we took she scooted a little closer and then started putting her arm around me... so sweet.

Me & my kids.

There was a pretty spectacular view of the suicide cliffs, where many Okinawan civilians committed suicide at the urging of Japanese troops.

We followed a walkway up a hill, and it was lined with memorials. Of course everything was written in Japanese, so we have no idea who they were for.

We got to enjoy another breathtaking sunset. Camera (or, probably more likely, our photography skills) didn't do it justice.

When it starting getting dark, we headed over to the light display. If was an interesting experience, in a funny way. The lights were pretty incredible, but somehow it just wasn't very Christmasy to look at them with ABBA's "Money, Money, Money" playing in the background. Or maybe it was the slightly generic show of girls in Arabic costumes belly dancing.

Notice the Japanese fashion behind me- black tights with shorts and heels is all the rage here. It was totally cold outside, but there were tons of girls wearing them.

Sydney was mesmerized by a guy juggling fiery batons- again, not very Christmasy, but entertaining nonetheless. Shawn got grumpy pretty quickly, so we didn't last very long. We had a great day exploring more of this beautiful island.