The Sunabe Seawall

We didn't plan on stopping here this weekend, but we were in the area picking up a dehumidifier and J. hadn't seen the ocean yet from this spot. I hear the seawall is a popular beginners dive spot, as there are stairs that you walk right down to the ocean and the water gets deep pretty fast. We did see lots of divers gearing up for a Saturday morning dive. They've built a really nicely-paved sidewalk that goes for maybe a mile or so, and the breezes from the ocean felt great. The seawall is just north of Araha Beach (the Pirate Ship park), so it's probably 5 miles from our home, but looking south you can still see the towers that denote our place on the coastline. It's a nice little walk to take, with lots of little restaurants within walking distance. We'll take you sometime if you're ever in the area!

D. just loves the wind blowing at her. 

Check it out, Vicki! "You are already part of. . .(I'd say something special. :)

A Great Find

                                                       

Well, we missed the turn-off trying to get to Gala and ended up along a little back road that was wandering right next to the water. When we both looked left and saw a beautiful populated beach and then looked right and saw the resort hotel, we ditched our idea of ever getting to Gala and decided we should take up immediate residence in the hotel and spend our days wading in the turquoise waters. We decided to pay for our new lifestyle by making A. drive a bus all day, which she has been happy to do so far.  

This has also been one of my first chances to take my camera into the bathroom (in the resort of course), so I snapped a pic of the arm on the toilets for you. This particular one had a button marked "flushing sounds" that you could play at various decibels so as to hide any other unheard of sounds coming from your stall. I personally preferred the chirping birds from a previous toilet encounter, as the birds don't cause A. to want to jump off the seat every time. We haven't had to wait in line for an "American" toilet yet, but it's my new goal in life to see how many months we girls can go before having to be really adventurous and use the squat toilets. 

She wasn't so happy about getting her dress wet in the water. The water is totally warm enough to get in already. Dad and the big kid might have even gotten in all the way if we'd brought our suits.

D. wasn't much for the water yet. It was a little cold for a baby. 

(Insert yourself in picture. :)

Gala Salt Factory

D. and some salt

Hmmm, a salt factory, you say? As in a place where they make salt? I think this is the off-season for activities around here, because the place was pretty dead, and we weren't quite sure what we were seeing. (Not that we'd have figured it out with more people around, but still.) Gala is mostly a place to see their work in action. We saw one man sitting with his mortar and pestle and bowl of salt, and another scooping off huge layers of salt from a flat container of seawater. And we saw these windmill things in the picture below. I'm not sure I would head back here a second time. Once again, if I could read Kanji I think we might have actually learned something. ;) The best part of their factory was the view from their cliff! And we did indulge in their salt ice cream, which tasted just like the homemade ice cream we all used to make in 2nd grade using ziploc bags.

The windmills

Here is Gala's own description of what happens with the windmills: "Condensation Tower- As the pyramid-shaped windmills rotate, the wet drum nets revolve causing the seawater to evaporate. Also the temperature in the tower is increased by the heat of the sun enhance the evaporation. It is the first seawater condensation facility in Japan; eco-friendly built.   Brewing Center - As the salt is simmered in a specially made flat pot over a charcoal fire, the snow white crystallization begins. In time, Okinawan sea salt, abundant with bittern, is produced.    Solar Crystallization House- The solar crystallization house utilizes the radiant sunlight and red Ryukyuan roof tiles which have the nature of absorbing moisture. The dense seawater produced at the Condensation Tower is put into a container made of red tiles, and sunbaked under the sun. Sunbaking creates beautifully glittering salt crystals."
Has anyone ever seen something like this somewhere else?

An awesome stone structure down below that we walked onto

She's becoming a ham.
By the way, you can click on any pic on the blog to enlarge it. 

Sea Seed

This place was just a steep walk down a hill from the salt factory. Sea Seed is a group that grows and replants coral in Okinawa to help preserve the island. That's about all I can tell you about the place as everything is written in Kanji/Kana. It was neat to see some really colorful coral up close, though, since we're not really into scuba diving. They have some neat tide pools where kids can pick up starfish, sea cucumbers, seaweed to feed the fish, and even jellyfish. A. actually reached in to touch a jelly, but then when a random lady lifted it from the water and tried to hand it to her, she backed away fast. It was neat to see what this group is doing. I'm not a marine biologist, so you'll have to ask someone else how coral farming/transplantation works. The way they had modeled their tanks with the white painted balls of concrete really made the place glow. 

Baby turtles-how cute!

A. throwing some seaweed to the fish

I thought they were dancing angels from from away, but they looked more like dead trees. 

Kokusai-Dori

A. in front of a movie store. . .any of the titles look familiar?

We were excited that J. found a map so we could finally figure out where we were!!

"Oh yes, NOW I know how to get there!" :)

On one of the many offshoots in Kokusai-Dori

This weekend we ventured out to a HUGE market/shopping place called Kokusai-Dori in Naha. First was the matter of getting there. There are a couple websites that Americans seem to use here, and the directions, although super helpful, just make me laugh. We of course passed where we were supposed to turn and were left driving in all directions until we spotted an arch that looked like maybe it could be an entrance to this huge marketplace. We pulled into the first tiny spot we found, and when we started walking, we knew we'd found the right place. Kokusai-Dori is a huge maze of alleys and stalls and shops. We bought our first piece of "Japanese" clothing here - size 100 shorts for A. It will take some nice math to figure out all our sizes in centimeters. . . I'd rather not equate such a high number with my waist size! The food stalls were woven in seamlessly among the clothes and other trinkets. For how many shops we walked past, we didn't spot many identical wares. I take it back. We did pass a few food vendors that had whole. . clumps? bushels? of dried blackened snakes hanging above the produce. I'm hoping it was not their highly poisonous Habu snake, because they do use that to make a form of sake here. I don't know if we really just stand out that much here or if people just like seeing a baby in a carrier, but with almost every stall we walked past I would look back and there would be a trio of ladies pointing and smiling at us. Kind of makes you feel like a celebrity. :) After a couple hours of wandering through shops, we exited the maze and were thrown out into sunlight onto a side street that didn't look familiar. We briefly thought about trying to find our car from there, and then decided it would be much better to be lost in the confines of a market, no matter how large, as opposed to being lost on city streets with no way of stopping to ask for directions. 

Below are the types of directions we'll be using frequently. I like 'em because they are "woman" directions. We got lost coming back too and J. says, "Just drive towards the setting sun. It's where the ocean is and you know our road is to the west." I guess that works, too. 

Pass Kinser. Pass the Pachinko parlors and stay in the left lane. Keep an eye out for an intersection that has the Birkenstock store on the corner and a purple church looking building. Make a left there. On the left hand side of the road you'll see the museum, the San-A and finally the DFS building. You can park under the DFS or in the San-A parking lot and walk a block over.

Make a right at the Pizza In road. Make your first left by the nail shop. You are on a little back road that runs parallel to 58. Pass tattoo shop. Pass apartment that says "English Course" on the side. At the end of the street (it's a t intersection with a blue vending machine) turn left. The AU building and restaurant are right there on your left.

Araha Beach

This is the first real beach we've been to since we got here. Our sponsors brought us here on one of our first days on island, so I was able to find my way back with the girls. These were all the pics I could wrangle with D. on my front and bags slung over my shoulders. This is on our side of the island, the East China Sea side, which has more of the coral. The sand felt soft to walk on, but right at the shoreline it's all crushed coral. Their jetties make for waveless swimming beaches, which I think will be awesome in the summer for the kids. A. and I felt the water, and it was already tolerable, already warmer than the CA water ever was. Can't wait to go swimming! I made this picture big so you can see where we live. See the closest group of rocks? There is a faint tower sticking up right behind the rocks, and we live right by the tower. It looks far, but it's only a few miles. I think this is the area of coastline that we see from our bedroom window, actually.

I'm not sure when this pirate ship washed ashore, but the kids love it! We will frequent "Pirate Ship Park" until it gets too crowded and hot, since it's not too far from us. 

Playing Around

Here are a few more pics from when we were staying at the lodge. They had a nice little playroom, which was nice floorspace for getting away from the hotel room. D. had just started crawling a few days before we left, so she was itching to get down on the floor and explore. 

Isn't her face just hilarious? I love it. 

What luck! They had Disney princesses painted all over the wall in the playroom. 

The first thing A. asked for when we walked into our new place filled with boxes was her princess chest. She put on her shoes and dress and walzed around the boxes all day while we unpacked.