Fukuoka Recent Hotel

... the one hand, this is a very beautiful place with friendly people and very nice, warm weather. The culture here is indeed more laid-back and is noticeably different from the mainland. People just act different here yet it is still Japan. On the other hand, this is a somewhat sad place where the weight of history and the hideous events of nearly a century ago still linger in the hearts and minds of the inhabitants. In addition, the resentment over the continued U.S ...

... carnage that took place here -- basically a city the size of Regina wiped out during a battle that lasted several months. Let's hope that nothing like that ever happens again in this beautiful place.<br><br>To close out the day, we did something quite strange. As we were walking home we came across a small Russian restaurant called Perestroika. The sign on the front had a picture of Mikhail Gorbachev on it -- cheesy but strangely enticing nonetheless. We decided ...

... next couple of days as we go on two guided tours. One will be up to the north end of the island to an aquarium and a pineapple farm. I am sure that once we get outside of Naha City that we will see the true tropical paradise aspects of this island. We will also be spending some time outside of the city on the south of the island. There is a lot of World War Two history here as this south end of the island is ...

... a walk to the playground in her extreme stroller. She and another very little girl played on the slides as we and the girl's parents raced around trying to keep them from falling. It was actually not a very toddler-friendly playground, as we had to scale a hill to get up there and navigate the stroller down a staircase to leave. Back at the house, we packed up everything, getting ready to say goodbye to Okinawa in the morning.

... it was a hot day made even worse by humidity.<br><br>The aquarium was very cool (especially since it had A/C, ha ha). There were lots of little exhibits to look at in addition to several big tanks that were chock full of fish. Since we were in Japan, everyone had a camera and crowded around to photograph every fish. Luckily, I was taller than almost everyone there, so I got some pictures too. The big tank with the whale sharks, rays ...

... to the car, it stopped raining, of course. Obviously after all of that I needed a nap, so I took one up in the guest room. When I woke up, we had an excellent dinner of pasta and root beer floats before heading to the mall. The Okinawan mall was different than other malls I've seen, with a more open floor plan while still having sort of individual shops. Right as we walked in there was a cartoon animal to ride on, which Riley saw and immediately wanted, so we had problems ...

... beer vending machine and I won the first game, Paul won the second, which worked out very nicely. It's not the same as Wii bowling at Dan and Jojo's with an audience everytime a 44 goes by! Finally we stumbled onto a really nice bar called Beer Cafe 7 - again no English spoken but we ended up with 2 beers, some deep fried pumpkin and a pizza = just what we wanted ! The hostel was a bit ...

... rice fields and hills covered in bamboo, pines, and a mix of trees holding on to their fall colors. There are clusters of homes in small hamlets and a few small cities but it is still probably 5 times the population density that the Southern Oregon coast has. The Oki in Super Oki refers to the Oki islands that lay off the coast of the Sanin which I have visted twice and love. This is one reason that I took the train along with the fact that I wanted ...

We had a lot of organisation to do today. We wanted tickets for the Sumo, train tickets for travel to Karashima national park, accommodation, and to work out the best time to activate our JR rail passes. I found out there was a sumo tournament in Tokyo, on the 1st, only thing was you had to phone up and book and they only spoke Japanese. We asked the receptionist for help, unfortunately it turned out that it was only the draw on the 1st and didn't actually start till the ...

... used to wrap the sushi rice into a roll or "maki". But the only purchase that we did at this market was a "kuuri", cucumber, and that looked like any cucumber that can be seen in Germany. This market called Fukusatou means "lucky home". No idea why. This market was however already located in Saga prefecture. The island of Kyushu has several prefectures (or states), and each prefecture has several cities (shi) and ...