Ie Jima

Last Wednesday night, my neighbor Louise asked me if we wanted to venture up to Ie island the following day to go to the lily festival. She hadn't made it up there yet, and as her family is getting ready to move back to the states in a few weeks, this was going to be her last shot. I'm always up for an adventure, so of course we were in! Man it's nice to be a stay at home mom with no kids in school :)

The next morning we were off at 9am in hopes of catching the 11am ferry. We pulled in to the port only to find about 5 minutes later that it was the wrong one! So we packed the kids back in the car and followed a hand drawn map to the real Motobu port. Unfortunately, the map wasn't that great and the parking was kind of far away, so we hurriedly walked up to the ferry just as it started pulling away. Blast!

Sydney was wearing her favorite sparkly turquoise slip-on shoes, and her running to the ferry was making one of them fall apart. I could totally pull the top part of her shoe away from the sole and see her toes. So not only did we miss our ferry, but my daughter's shoes were falling apart. Great. We sat down and had lunch, then hopped on the next ferry and kept our fingers crossed that it wouldn't rain on us.

 So long Okinawa!

 Making our way to cloud covered Ie island.

Once we arrived at Ie's port, we had to get bus tickets to drive to the lilies. Louise and I felt a few raindrops as we stepped on the bus. Sydney thought the bus was super cool and asked about a billion questions on the 10 minute ride, including asking if every weed or flower she saw out the window was the lilies.

When we arrived, we stepped off the bus and the clouds parted! It was a small miracle, we couldn't even believe our good luck. The festival was right on the coast, the contrast of colors was really beautiful.

 

 Me and my cutie pies (one of which I had to bribe to smile in this picture).

A short walk to the bathrooms brought us to a path right near the water, and it was seriously so entertaining to watch the water crash up onto the rocks. I think I could have watched it all day.

Doesn't Shawn look happy to be in this picture with me?

 Emmy & Louise

 Syd & Emmy on a cool rock.

After the wave crashing show, we walked back over to the lilies. They were all so pretty.

As we kept walking, we went past a pavilion area where various dancers were performing.

 Giving Syd a lift so she can see.

Sydney is not a fan of loud sounds...

 so she watched them like this. She even does this when we flush the toilet, that girl has some very sensitive ears.

When we started making our way back to the bus area, we ran into our neighbors the Terpstra's! 

 Emmy, Louise, Sydney, Me, Shawn, & Ashley

The bus ride back was pretty crowded, so we had to pull down these little aisle chairs:

 I thought they were pretty clever.

We actually made a few stops to let people off and other people on, and people were so helpful in putting my chair away and then getting it back out for me. Pretty sure I said "Arigato gosai mas" ("Thank you very much") about a billion times, 'cause it's one of the only things I know how to say! Sydney was making the people next to her laugh quite a bit. Turns out they were trying to give her a wrapped piece of candy and she kept shaking her head "no." Then I told her what it was, and she was happy to say "yes."

Then we jumped back on the ferry and said goodbye to Ie...

and hello again to Oki:

I will never tire of seeing this water.

The weather ended up being incredible, we couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day! Another bonus was that Sydney's broken shoe actually held up for the whole day, but made it into the garbage can shortly after we walked in the door.

Culture Exchange

At church, we are in one of six branches within the military district on Okinawa. The building our branch meets in is also the stake center for the Gushikawa Stake, which is all Japanese members. Last weekend our Relief Societies had a Cultural Exchange, with classes taught by Japanese women in the morning and American women in the afternoon. 

There were lots of things we could rotate through, but there was only time for everyone to choose three classes. I decided to start the morning off making some sushi. Layering everything was super easy- the tricky part was rolling it all up!

 Giving it my best shot. The secret was in the "smoosh." 

 I wasn't smooshing it very well, my imitation crab and avocados were falling out all over the place. Thankfully, I got plenty of help from the experts!

 Not too shabby, eh?

My next class was learning to make a pork, egg, and rice dish called Katsudon. We got to taste some of that too, so with that and the sushi, I'd pretty much had a full meal by 10am.

My last class was my favorite: Kimono. It was all in the Relief Society room, with a hair station in one corner, a big section where they were dressing people up, and another corner set up with a backdrop for pictures. I've never worn a legit corset, but I think this is about the closest I've come. The obi (worn around the waist) had some serious reinforcements under it. There was certainly no slouching (or deep breathing!) with that thing on.

I had to laugh that taking pictures in front of the backdrop felt a lot like getting senior pictures done. My friend taking the pictures was giving me instructions on how she wanted me to sit and hold the umbrella, it was all cracking me up.

 A classy "look over your shoulder" pose to show off the obi tie in the back.

After they took off my kimono, I had fun sitting in there watching the other girls get dressed up. There were about a billion kimonos too, the fabrics all so different from one another.

Elvia getting dressed up, holding her arms like that for about 10 minutes while they wrap and tie the obi!

 Heather & Brenda. I was pretty jealous I didn't get to wear that hat.

Katie & Dawn

I ditched out after lunch, but I'm so glad I got to meet more Okinawan women and have fun learning more about their culture. And I'm not gonna lie, it was nice to have three whole hours sans kids :) Plus, I came home to find that Spencer had cleaned the kitchen and cleaned and folded several loads of laundry. Maybe I should do this kind of thing more often! 

Last Week

Between 5:30 and 6pm every day, Spencer looks out our kitchen window and says something along the lines of, "It looks like we're going to have an awesome sunset. Should I get out the camera?" Since we're still learning the ropes of taking good pictures with our camera, they always just turn out ok. But on one particular evening he also intermittently took these cute ones of Sydney walking in the ditch, a popular play spot for the kids on "the hill."

The weather here can turn on a dime. I'll check the forecast at night, then it will be totally different in the morning. More often than not, a sunny day will all of a sudden turn into a rainy one, but we've also had several days that were supposed to be stormy that ended up being totally beautiful.

We took another trip to the zoo, enjoying the flowers and eating lunch under a pavilion while it rained a bit.

Then we headed into the Wonder Museum for some lessons on perspective,

 

and water play, among other things.

We cleared out when a daycare arrived and a bunch of unruly kids took over all the stations. Bummer.

Luckily by then the sun had come out, so we got to cover some areas of the zoo we'd missed the last time we were there. There was a long bridge that cut across a giant pond, and they had vending machines with food for 100 yen at each end. 

Boy did those fish clamor over those little food pellets! The birds followed Sydney around too, snitching everything she accidentally dropped.

Then it was on to see more animals.

When it was time to leave, all clouds were gone and the sun was BRIGHT. Sydney was whining about the sun being in her eyes, but I didn't have her sunglasses. I asked her if she wanted mine, and she said "yes."

She thought she was pretty silly.

On Wednesday we took a trip to the Kurashiki Dam, which I'd heard was a fun place for kids to play. The day started off pretty warm and sunny, but it had gotten more cloudy and windy by the time we got there.

We walked back and forth through the water several times, but it just wasn't hot enough outside to warrant a full on swim. We had a picnic lunch, and Sydney filled up and emptied a squeeze bottle about 50 times, spraying the big rocks with water while I fed Shawn some baby food.

There were tons of paths all around the area, with beautiful views of the dam. Since it's located just east of Kadena, we also got to see some fighter jets take off just over the water. It looked pretty cool, but Sydney isn't into loud noises (and they are sooo loud!!) so she plugged her ears while they flew overhead.

They also had music playing over loud speakers near the visitors' center. Sydney has been kind of obsessed with The Sound of Music lately (the VonTrapp's have become her imaginary children that go everywhere with her), so I had to laugh when they started playing an instrumental version of "Do Re Mi." What are the odds?

The visitor's center was small, but there was a section made to look like a cave with several small interactive stations inside. You could easily pass through in about 2 minutes, but we were there for at least 15 since Sydney was having a blast pushing the buttons over and over again.