While on our family outing to the Peace Memorial Park, Jason looked online for any hidden geocaches in the area. Sure enough, we found some clues and went on a quest for our next geocaching adventure. This time it was in a tree in the parking lot of the Memorial Park! Jason finally found it when climbing the tree once we were sure there weren't any "mugglers" (gawking bystanders). We found a little plastic box with a soaked log book and lots of ants! Unfortunately, we couldn't leave our 'mark' in the logbook because it was too wet. Nonetheless, we can check this one off our list of geocaches to find on the island.

Pirates on the Beach

We found a neat park this weekend! The boys were excited to find a big pirate ship! Though it was a cloudy day and later ended in a good rainstorm, we made the best of the day. This little Japanese girl really took a liking to Cameron and kept wanting to race him on the zipline.

We're going to check out more parks on the island as the weather cools off. This park was on the beach along with roped off areas for swimming, and kayak rentals. We may just take advantage of that!

Tombs?!

Along the path we saw several tombs, these are actually quite common here, they are found in weird places like right off the highways and roads, alleyways, neighborhoods and backyards! They make the best neighbors, they're very quiet! It is sad though. See, the Japanese believe that their ancestors' spirits come to visit them every year between the months of August and October. During this time, the Japanese make food and leave it at the tombs for their ancestors and have ceremonies celebrating the dead with drums and dancing. They also believe that the spirits back to rest and need the help of the drums (quite erry) to aid them on their way back to the underworld. It is actually taboo to take pictures of the tombs. I've included some pictures anyway. I am thankful for a risen Savior, Whom I can petition anytime of the day or night, Who gives me hope of eternal life, and daily blessings on top of all that!

Geocaching!!

I guess the excitement of looking for buried or hidden treasure doesn't end in your pre-teen years, we still enjoy the search for treasure though on a more sofisticated level, of course! Who ever thought that spending the day looking for a clear plastic rubbermaid box containing pen, notepad and stamp would be exciting?! My sister got us into letterboxing when we were neighbors in Washington state; this became one of our hobbies and family activities. We've decided to start exploring our opportunities here in Okinawa, and have found that there are "tons" (per my sis) of hidden treasures! Maybe this will be our "Treasure Island"? There aren't any letterboxes hidden here, so far as we can see online, but there are "tons" of geocaching maps and trails! See, we've moved on to a more sofisticated level of searching for hidden treasure, it's called Geocaching! So with iphone in hand (our built-in compass app), bug repellant, water, and good shoes, we're off geocaching.

Our first venture at geocaching took us to someone's apartment complex, we weren't sure where to go from there, aside from waking all the neighbors on the block! So we canned this quest and searched for another geocaching adventure on our handy dandy iphone! This was a successful hunt which led us down a footbeaten path into a little forest area. Our friend found the geocache container right when we were about to give up the search. It's always rewarding to find something at the end of your hike, even if it is just a big plastic container full of other plastic containers, kiddy trinkets, a wet logbook and ants! We took along a travel bug and are looking for another geocaching adventure where we can hide it. We looked up the travel bug (a plastic squid toy with a geotag attached) online and found that it originated in Oregon and had made it to Hawaii, mainland Japan twice, and now here in Okinawa! We'll keep you posted on our adventures, I'll try!