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Guess what day it is! It's the 24th of February, which means I have been in Japan for exactly one month now. It's gone incredibly fast, and I really miss Australia but it has already been such an experience here. I'm really looking forward to the next 11 months.

Anyway, this will mainly be an update about my trip to Okinawa. :)

We woke up at 6am on Friday morning, caught the train to Chitose and flew out of Hokkaido at around 9:15am (in ALOT of snow. I was scared!)
Anyway, after getting the connecting flight in Tokyo, we arrived in Okinawa around 2:30pm and went to our hotel in Naha. I shared a room with my two sisters and the parents slept in a room next door.

In the afternoon, we visited the underground tunnels where Japanese soldiers fought from in WW2. It was pretty interesting.. and one room I walked into, saw some chips in the wall and thought "oh yeah, just gunfire.." then I saw this;...definitely got the heebie jeebies. everything was in Japanese so unfortunately I didn't understand why they committed suicide etc. But there you go.

We spent the evening walking around the main street, which is really awesome; lots and lots of lights, music, people, everything. Okinawans have a lot more of a laid-back personality, and a good sense of humour. And there was no snow! It was only about 18 on the first day, but the warmest it got was around 23 or so. It was extremely nice to have the sun on me again.
On Saturday morning, while my host parents went to play golf all day, my sisters and I (in the rent-a-car), drove 2 hours north to visit the biggest aquarium in the world. It was pretty good, although there were so many people there it made it a little hard to be able to look at everything.

We also watched a dolphin show which was good, the sun came out and so it was waaarm~~ and the dolphins seemed like they were having fun, which made me happy :)



After the aquarium, we drove back down south to a Pineapple Park where they grow some of the pineapples and things. We had a small tour in a self-driven pineapple buggy, which sort of creeped me out; no cables or anything, it just literally drove itself.
After tasting many pineapples (And pineapple cake, pineapple biscuits, pineapple chocolate..) we drove back to the hotel where we rested, then went back down the main street after dinner. There are alot of American soldiers who are stationed in Okinawa, so I met some who were hilarious; and they were very happy to meet me - "man you are so sexy, that Australian accent, ahh!"We also made friends with a few more shop-keepers.. basically, when they realise you don't want to buy whatever it is they're trying to sell, they'll just strike up a conversation. :)

On Sunday, we took the rent-a-car back out again, this time to Okinawa World; which is exactly that. Like a small theme park about Okinawa. There were caves, more pineapples, glass-making, traditional song and dance, snakes and snake wine.
That night we went, yet again, to the main street, to a Teppanyaki restaurant. It's a table with the BBQ built in, and each table gets their own personal chef. We ate tofu, salad, steak, rice, lobster, and this garlic rice stuff which was really tasty but I only could eat like half a spoonful because I was so damn full.
We flew out of Naha International Airport on Monday afternoon, after visiting Okinawa Castle (A World Heritage place) in the morning. It was good, but they had been renovating and restoring everything. I personally think they've overdone it; it's basically just been rebuilt completely new, so it doesn't feel like anything ancient.
But anyway, Okinawa was great, I hope that one day I can visit again.. maybe in the summer!