Naha Dragon Boat Races

On May 5th each year is the annual Dragon Boat Races held in Southern Okinawa. The day is also "A day of the child', celebrating children. A friend and I headed down to witness this fun event. About 18-24 teams, which consist of 40 per team, compete against one another. Three race at a time. The military branches enter each year and make it a big competition between each other based on the time of who wins the overall race. It was a drizzly day, but a big crowd to cheer everyone on. Here is a short preview of one of the races.

                                        

Along side the races there was a festival for the children with little rides, bouncy castles, and fun carnival games. Check out our picture link of a few more photos and the delicious cuisine that we tried out. 

Just an explanation as to what is on top of these french fries....I got a garnish of a fried piece of chicken as well as a halved hot dog cut to look like an octopus....just another day in the life....!

                                                 

Lily Festival

Toward the end of April each year on IE Island, there is a Festival celebrating the beauty of Lily's.  You start out by taking a half hour ferry ride to the island. You can choose to walk on and then catch a cab, rent bikes to bike around or drive your car on the ferry to have once you get over to the next island. A couple friends and I took my little blue car and headed off. It turned out to be a gorgeous day. The lily's were out in full bloom and to my lack of knowledge they had lily's of all different colors.

At any festival or 'fair' if you will, on any part of the island they run about the same with consistent types of food that will be served. Similar to our fairs they do actually have ears of corn, buttered with sugar, not salt, corn dogs you only hope have kosher hot dogs inside, and then the traditional yakisoba, sushi, octopus, and chicken (or you hope is chicken) on a stick. Then you have the ice cream vendors, which serves the common, vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, and of course the sweet potato (which is delicious), and green tea options. While walking around taking in all of the beauty, I knew I was getting a few passing looks because of my belly. There was one gentlemen who I could tell wanted to say something to me so I politely said 'hi' and he gestures to touch my belly. I said it was o.k. With a big smile he touched my belly and began to try and tell me about how he has 5 children and what a blessing they all are. In the Okinawa culture they see pregnancy with such joy and honor and when the women reach about 7-9 months they stop working, put their feet up and are pampered by their husbands and family....I know, what are we doing wrong?? I received a lot of smiles and nods from many local people which was such a fun thing to experience.

After our little island tour we headed back to Okinawa and stopped off at one of the local eateries called Pizza in the sky. This is a nice little restaurant up North that sits high on a hill overlooking the ocean. It has a fun local style pizza that comes in either large or small and the menu is written out on a traditional folding fan....very neat. What a great way to end the fun day!

Check out more pictures at our link to the right!

Hide and Go Seek

So, while I have been home a lot more and around the house, Bailey does not really know what to do with herself. I have always wondered what she did while I was at work. I assumed all she did was sleep. Well, I soon found out that she loves being able to be out and about more during the day. I will play out a scenario that happened a couple weeks after I got back. I was getting ready to head out for a quick errand run and I check the usual spots for Bailey. Upstairs on her bed, nowhere to be seen, downstairs into the laundry room, not on her bed, into the dining room, not by the door. As our little house would allow, I have exhausted all of my options at this point, until I hear a big sigh.....as you can see from the photo, I had to do a double take to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing. I guess Bailey likes to play hide and go seek!
So, lesson of the day, dogs do know how to express their feelings and maybe, just maybe, they like to be let out of the laundry room a little more.....Bailey, I get it!

Lazy Days

Hello again!  I feel I should re-introduce ourselves to this blog since it has been quite a long time since we have added to it.  As most of you know, we are expecting our first little one in the next month (June 20th) and to prepare, a lot has gone on.  I can start with saying I quit my job in February so I could galavant back in the States for a month and a half and go shopping, shopping, and shopping.....ohh and to visit with a lot of friends and family which was of course the reason I went home!  I can say this, our child should have everything it will need or want at least for it's first year of life.  (I say 'It', because as most of you know we are waiting to find out the gender, it truly is an evil plot to make the Grandparents and Aunts go CRAZY....I think it is working)  After many travels in the states, MO, IL, FL, NV, and ID...I finally made it back home where Bailey greeted me and as you can tell from the photo so did all of my purchases....... I did mention I did some shopping didn't I? With that means laundry and making room for all of the new fun things.  As you will read with our upcoming blogs, since I have been back on island, I have done quite a few last minute.....'this would be very hard to do with a newborn' type of activities.  Keep reading and waiting for our BIG news of our future little one...can not wait to introduce you all!

  

All because of the 'Y' Plate

So there we were, leaving the 'Moon" bar around midnight last night with another couple. We turn onto a one way street and we see a cop hiding in the shadows. They immediatley begin to follow us. We follow along this one way street for about five minutes and then I make another turn onto a two way street, as soon as they get on the street, lights go on and they are pulling us over. Mind you, we have done nothing in the way of breaking any traffic laws...   

Allow me to give you some insight as to how, other than looking at who is driving, the way we Americans stand out. On our plates there is a 'Y' before the numbers and on the local plates there is a Kanji symbol, dead giveaway especially at night.  I pull over the car and the Japanese policeman is very nice asking me "Yes, you were drinking?  to which I answer"No", then he looks over at Brad and can tell he has been drinking, so he says, you have been drinking yes, Brad replies....'us three have been drinking, yes' trying not to snicker under his breath.  So the policeman gets out his breathalizer and I blow into it of course not coming up with a thing. As polite as he was, it was just funny how convienient it was they were to pull us over for not doing anything wrong other than of course having a 'Y' plate!

Happy New Year to you all!

Our first documentary

Check out this 30 second tour of our house on Christmas Eve. (It's basically from the front door, and into the family/dining room)