Okinawa World

We woke up bright and early this morning to start our adventure in Okinawa World, a tourist spot in the southern part of the island. After a quick trip on the expressway and some stellar navigating by yours truly (I suppose it helped that I had both printed directions and a map), we arrived at our destination. We decided to do all three experiences offered- the Habu museum, Cave, & Kingdom Village.

We happened to arrive right when the live habu show was starting. It's always interesting to go to shows here as they are in Japanese and we can't understand anything they're saying. Nonetheless, we got to see a mongoose out swim a water snake, a habu pop a balloon by biting it, and the lady smack a cobra on the back of the head. Still not sure what that was about, but she did it like 3 times and it's face smacked the floor pretty hard each time. Weird. The photo op was saved for last, where they bust out the boa and let you hold it for pictures.

Spencer was gung-ho about doing this, but couldn't get Syd to join him. My excuse was for bowing out was that I was holding Shawn. Then when his turn was over, he took the baby and talked me into it. The ladies that worked there just pick it up and wrap it around your shoulders like it's no big deal, but it was HEAVY!

This is a fake smile- I hate snakes and was actually kind of terrified. Good thing the whole photo shoot only took like 30 seconds.

After the show we walked through a little museum with a bunch of snake skeletons and pictures.

Daddy & Shawn checking out the snake pictures.

Shawn was a champion in the BabyBjorn.

Outside there were more live reptiles. There was an area with tons of snakes on rocks and in the trees.

Spencer said it reminded him of Indiana Jones.

I thought this sign on the wall by the snakes was pretty funny, partially because of the stellar translation, and partially because I didn't know snakes could cry.

These giant tortoises were pretty cool.

The next leg of our adventure was walking through the limestone cave. We walked down lots of stairs, and it gradually got cooler and wetter.

There was a continual sound of dripping and running water as we walked through the cave. Sydney would occasionally laugh and say, "Hey, I got a drip in my hair!" Then other times it would be a much whinier voice saying, "Uh! It keeps dripping me! I don't like that."

Then she would ask me to hold her.

By the time we got out of the cave, Shawn was ready to eat. We hurried through a botanical garden and the Kingdom Village in search of a restaurant so we could have lunch too. Afterward we strolled back through Kingdom Village, which ended up mostly being a bunch of shops. Not sure I would pay to do it again if we were to go back. However, we found a small pond full of fish, and there was a basket of small baggies of fish food you could buy for 100 yen. Sydney was highly entertained by throwing in the pellets and watching the fish race to see who could get it first.

I thought this shisa outside of a small Okinawa museum was pretty impressive.

We ended the day by going to an Eisa dance show, which involved lots of drumming, jumping, yelling, singing, and sanshin playing. At the beginning of the show, they asked for volunteers to come up to play some drums. I asked if Sydney wanted to go up and she said yes. I was holding Shawn, so Spencer took her up.

About 2 minutes later, it was clear that she was not interested. We were seated about 4 rows back, so she just walked back to our bench.

Spencer, on the other hand, was stuck up front playing the drums with a bunch of kids until they were done. He was totally embarrassed. Ha!

Sydney was originally sitting on the end of our row, which I thought would be a good place for her so she could see the performance. She plugged her ears for most of it as the drums were too loud for her taste. However, when a dragon came out as part of the performance, she totally freaked out. She ran to sit on Spencer's lap and was doing ok... until the dragon started walking through the audience and pretended to eat people. Just so happened that since she had moved I was now on the end, holding a sleeping baby Shawn. And the dragon came over and pretended to eat him. Poor Sydney was plugging her ears and screaming, her little body was stiff with terror. Thankfully, it was so loud in there that it wasn't super noticeable, and she wasn't the only kid that screamed from the dragon coming near! We weren't allowed to take pictures during the formal performance, but they did allow let us do some staged pictures with some of the performers afterward.

We had to walk through a touristy shop to get to the exit, and Sydney wanted to sit in this thing while we waited for Spencer to go to the bathroom. When he was done I passed over the babe and went for my turn. I came out to find 3 Japanese ladies crowded around them, 2 of them touching Sydney's hair. I tried to snap a picture of them, but they had dispersed before I could get a good picture.

I remember thinking that stuff like that would scare her, but it turns out she kind of loves the attention. As she is quite the chatty Kathy, she is happy to talk to anyone who is willing to give her an audience. Spencer told me she had been showing them her painted fingernails and telling them, "I'm two!"

Round 1

Hooray for 96's!! Today marked the start of a 4-day weekend in celebration of Columbus day. Spencer was on call this week and still had to be at the clinic at 6:30am, so he volunteered to stick around for the morning to help with the command's effort to get marines who are class 3 or 4 (not deployable because they're annual exams are out of date or they still have dental work that needs to be done) to become class 1 or 2 (deployable). He's also been doing a Fleet Marine Force (FMF) class every Saturday morning for the past few months. Since he gets home from that during nap time, it seems like we rarely have time to explore the island. I have been looking forward to this weekend for a while, and we jumped right in by ditching Sydney's nap and heading to Round 1 today after lunch.

Round 1 is a 7-story indoor entertainment complex. Floors 1 & 2 were full of arcade games.

The 3rd floor was the biggest bowling alley I've ever seen.

I can't remember what was on the 4th floor, but we were there for the stuff on floors 5-7.

The main perk for Sydney was obviously the kids' area, which was actually really fun for us too!

These guns were reminiscent of American Gladiators.

You can either throw those balls in the orange thing, where they sucked up the pipe and thrown into the basket, or you can try to shoot them in with your gun.

Then when the siren goes off, all the kids (or in this case, Spencer) lay down under the basket while it spills all of the balls onto them.

If you didn't want to jump in to play with your kid, you could relax and watch them from a nearby comfy leather chair. A few of them were massage chairs!

Lucky me, I jumped in there after a Japanese lady had turned it on and then left. Spencer tried to start the one next to it, but he couldn't figure out the buttons :)

There was TONS to do on this floor, like:

boxing,

riding bikes,

and kiddie bowling.

There were also free arcade games, a roller skating rink, darts, basketball, ping pong, and simulators for rifle shooting, golf, soccer, and tennis.

When I had to change Shawn's bum, I went to the kids' bathroom. I thought this sign was funny:

I actually changed his diaper on a bench in the "suckle room" as the changing table was kind of disgusting.

The kids' area was also a "no shoes" zone, and since the bathroom was within said zone, they kindly provided these slippers in the bathroom for both adults and kids. Probably not super sanitary, but it beat walking through a bathroom with no shoes.

The 6th floor had a food court, a mechanical bull, and lots of karaoke rooms. I had to feed Shawn, so I thought I would do a little karaoke while I was tied to the couch. The songbook was about 4 inches thick, but it was all in Japanese. We did happen upon a song by Lady Antebellum, but we didn't know it. Bummer.

The 7th floor had soccer, tennis, putting greens, basketball, archery, batting cages, and courts that could be used for badminton or volleyball. Spencer was itchin' to do the batting cages, so Sydney hung out with me on a bench and had some juice while I finished feeding Shawn. Then we took the kids (stroller and all) into a court cause I was itchin' for a little volleyball. Spencer set me a few really good ones, but I was pretty terrible! I'd like to think I would have done better with appropriate footwear and a sports bra.

After our 3 hours of play, we headed to a random restaurant on the 58 for dinner.

We weren't very impressed, but it was still a fun experience.

Halloween Decorating!

We have been talking about Halloween a lot around here... specifically trick-or-treating. Sydney knows all about her costume, and how we'll knock on doors and get candy. I thought with some recent rainy days we should build on her excitement and do some Halloween crafts. We busted out the glue sticks and scissors (which she asks for all the time but I always tell her no), and got to work.

She really went to town with that glue stick. Can you see how the whole right side of that pumpkin is pretty much covered?

The final product. She glued all those pieces on herself!

Next was coloring and painting Halloween pictures with watercolor pencils. I thought these were kind of a bust, but Sydney had fun making a mess with that water.

We have acquired a few decorative Halloween lights over the past few years, and Sydney has happily taken ownership of them. I showed her how they glow in the dark, and she spent the next few days going in and our of the storage area under our stairs turning them on and off.

I put new batteries in that orange pumpkin on Monday, and they are already dead :)

I mentioned that Sydney was so excited to get to use scissors, and she asked if she could have them this morning to do a craft. I gave her some paper and scissors, and she went to town.

Notice anything that doesn't belong?

I don't think this was an intentional hair cut. I notice Sydney scratched her head with the scissors in hand... then later noticed some hair hanging about 2 inches lower than the rest of her curly locks.

She's not the only one who's been feeling the Halloween itch. I've been having fun doing my share of decorating.

I was excited to find those candy corns- they're surprisingly hard to come by on base!

I'm also in the process of repainting this ceramic Frankenstein. I bought it at a Pat Catan's when I was like 10 years old, and painted it that night at a sleepover. Pretty sure I spent my allowance trying to keep it well stocked with Starbursts. It has lots of paint chips, so I thought it could use a face lift. Thanks for holding on to it for all these years Mom :)

Blessing Day

Shawn was blessed by his daddy on October 2. It was a little bit sad to not have any family in the circle, but we were grateful to have friends Erin Palmer, Aaron Smith, Chris Hamlin, John Petrini, and President Rupp be there with us.

My handsome little guy as we were heading out the door.

After church with a hungry boy. Spencer didn't want to wait for me to feed him as he was dying to get out of his suit.

Sydney, who was enjoying a pre-lunch snack (she loves red peppers), had little interest in taking a family picture.

Lawson

The other night, we made good use of our COLA (cost of living allowance) and had dinner at the Tortilla Factory. All the advertisements I saw made it look similar to Chipotle, but we thought it was just mediocre. That being said, I was warned by more experienced neighbors that there's no good Mexican food in Okinawa. but I guess it was a moment of weakness. On our way home, we decided to make our first ever stop at a Lawson, a little store similar to 7-11, to choose a few Japanese treats for dessert. Baked goods here can be a little deceiving... like donuts aren't nearly as sweet, and what you think is chocolate interlaced in your bread ends up being bean paste. We each chose one thing that looked yummy, then took them home to split them so we could all taste each one.

I chose the puffy green one, Sydney chose the croissant-looking one, and Spencer chose the Twinkie-esque one.

To our surprise, they were all pretty sweet. Spencer took a bite of the green one, which also had a green filling, and said it tasted kind of like kiwi. After biting into it, I felt like it was a really familiar flavor, but it wasn't distinctly kiwi. Then I realized it tasted like the smell of Cucumber Melon lotion from Bath & Body Works. We were also surprised that the chocolate in Sydney's croissant thing really was chocolate (I was prepared for it to just be colored with squid ink, which I've tried before in bread here). However it apparently wasn't accessible enough for her as she said in a very frustrated voice, "I'm trying to each the chocolate, but I can't bite it!" Spencer's was really yummy, the creamy filling had a coconut flavor. We actually knew that one was good before we bought it because some friends brought them to us with a meal right after Shawn was born.

Syd liked dipping her finger in that filling and licking it off. Mmmmmm.

Little Brother & Big Sister

Like I've said before, Sydney really loves her little brother. Every time I leave the room for even 2 seconds, I usually come back to find her all over him- giving him kisses, saying things like "Hi my cutie pie," or *helping* him move his arms. This particular day was no different, but I thought it was cute that she was laying next to him on the ground. Notice how she never takes her hand off of him in any of the pictures.

Saying "Cheese!"

Pretty sure this one was followed by me saying, "Don't touch his face." I think I say that about 5,000 times a day.

Cause apparently she doesn't remember it for long.