So many activities

We did so much yesterday that I passed out on the couch when we got home and woke up at 2:30am with all the lights off. I’m writing this blog on my phone on the way to the airport. This is going to be a long post.

Amber suggested that we get to the aquarium as early as possible before the schools and tour groups arrived. We got out of the house around 7:30 and made the hour and a half drive up the West coast of Okinawa. It was a really wonderful drive along the ocean and there are Lawsons convenience stores basically every mile so bathroom and snack breaks are super easy…almost too easy.

Got to Charaumi aquarium and it’s huge. For those planning on going, I’ll summarize quickly as to not spoil the trip. I love the idea of going to an aquarium but usually it’s more than $50 to go. This one was only $15 for admission. There’s so much to see and learn we could have spent an entire day looking at everything. A few years ago I saw a picture of the main tank that holds two whale sharks and added to my bucket list. The moment we turned the corner and saw it, just WOW. Hard to describe how awesome it is even with pictures. I think we spent at least half an hour looking at all the different fish swimming around in circles. I highly recommend making a trip up here to visit just to see the aquarium.

It was about 2pm when we left, Jack wanted to go to the northern tip of the island called daisekirinzan but it was too late in the day to make it. Instead I randomly Google searched for nearby waterfalls to visit and chose Fukigawa Falls which was about an hour away going back towards the city.

We had to drive up roads that were wide enough to fit one car through the jungle. There was only one car parked next to a hiking path and a sign in Japanese. Basically it looked like the suicide forest if you know what that is.

We hiked for 10 minutes totally unsure if we were going the right way or even if we were in the right place when a random old man walked out of the woods with barely any clothes on. We used hand signals trying to ask where the waterfall was and he showed us his digital camera that it was right up ahead.

It’s weird, in some of my pictures the waterfall looked really tiny so I had to do the sane thing and swim out to it to see for myself. The water was COLD but my body quickly became numb enough to fully submerge. I may have taken several accidental sips of water, as of right now, nothing is coming out of my body that shouldn’t be.

I dried off and we hiked back up to where we parked. There was about an hour left until sunset and Joanna wanted to go to the beach to look for seashells. Since we were on the west side of the island, the beach was relatively close and we’d have plenty of time to walk around before it got dark.

After the beach Jack wanted to check out a yakiniku restaurant that he saw on a youtube video. Yakiniku is like Korean bbq just with Japanese flavors. This one was called Yakiniku Goen, it was all you can eat for $25 per person. The whole set up was very cool where you had a wireless tablet where you would put in your orders and they would bring you your meat and veggies. Kimberly mistakenly ordered 6 orders of chopped green onion instead of whole green onions for grilling – -”. The food was delicious but I think we ate too much. Joanna, Kimberly, and I shared a table and ordered 14 plates of meat. While Jack, Gretchen, Alex, and Stephanie shared a table and ordered 17 plates of meat.