Our Trip to the Japanese Orphanage!

We recently had the opportunity to visit a local Japanese orphanage. This is where they live. They share rooms, two kids per room. They have a good sized gym where we held our event, though they didn't have any balls to play with.

The kids patiently wait for the events of the day!

My hospital's chaplain's office had a tree with candy canes on it, bearing the names, ages, and sizes of the orphans. We could pick up a candy cane and buy for the child and then return the candy cane with wrapped gifts to the chaplain's office so they knew who got what!

I didn't find out about this opportunity to buy gifts until too late, but I was able to bring the whole family to help with the various games and crafts. The boys had a great time mingling with the orphans and other children that came to visit. They were able to get in on the food and games. Our booth was the cookie decorating booth and it had it's perks! Cameron got to eat all the broken cookies! When the activity at our booth died down, we let the boys run through all the booths for some fun and games.

This little guy is adorable! He was all banged up in the legs and head, just a rough-houser I guess. He was a happy little guy! This is the one I wanted to take home!
It was great to see their smiles!

Overall, our favorite part was watching the kids receive their gifts with big smiles and victory dances . The chaplain had to put a halt to all the gifts that people were bringing! Each child received at least 4 gifts each! There were tons of gifts left over too! We experienced the truth of the verse that says, "It is more blessed to give than to receive! "
This little guy can barely see over the top of his bundle!Then they read the Christmas story and did a cheesy job of acting it out, but nonetheless .... Then "Santa" gave out the gifts to each kid. The orphans wouldn't open their gifts, we had to prompt them to open them. They were very appreciative and carefully examined each thing they got. Some children didn't even open some of their packages, guess they thought it was too pretty to open! We helped clean up the gym where all this was taking place and moved everything outdoors for a traditional Christmas dinner on the grounds. I wanted to hold some of those kids, but some Americans had already grabbed them up. Evidently, the hospital does some sort of function with this orphanage on a monthly basis. The First Class Petty Officers of the hospital get small groups together to go once a month for grounds keeping and BBQ at the orphanage. This event was the biggest event of them all. I think we Americans outnumbered the workers and residents! It was great! Cameron wanted to have "some of those Japanese kids over for dinner and to play with them!" Daniel and Cameron were trying to think of some of their own toys that they could give to these children. We will definitely be making another trip down there!

Sweet Potato Festival!

We try to get out for some sort of adventure in Okinawa, about every weekend or so. With the help of the local paper, Japan Update, I can stay abreast of the various festivals and activities available here. We missed the Obon festival as it was either during church, school, work or bedtime hours! The Obon is held in the months of August and September and focuses on the Japanese ancestry and the honoring of their dead. There are a lot of different celebrations, dances, and costumes associated with this festival. As that may be a more morbid topic, we chose to try out their "Sweet Potato Festival". This festival is a yearly celebration of the harvesting of the sweet potato which wasn't ever a native plant here in Okinawa, but was brought to Okinawa by a farmer many years ago. It's become a staple item here, so the sweet potato is worthy of it's celebration! There were lots of sweet potato plants and potatoes to buy as well as lots to taste!

Have you seen a purple potato? We did see some purple potatoes in an ordering magazine in Washington state, but I had never seen one in person. Pretty wild actually! The purple sweet potato tastes like a regular orange sweet potato, just not as sweet and a little dryer. However, the purple sweet potato seems to be more common than the usual orange ones we're used to.Not sure if Cameron's "diggin" this one!

Here Mr. Sweet Potato takes to walking through the crowds in the park.

More yummy sweet potato!

We decided to join the big crowds in this area of the park to figure out what all the excitement was. They had hauled in some dirt from a local farm and had buried lots of sweet potatoes. This was their version of an easter egg hunt! With bags in hand, the kids were itching to get busy digging. They blew the whistle and off went the kiddos......

After this event, we wandered over to another crowd of onlookers. I am not sure what this particular sport is, but there were lots of different age groups of fighters and teams. The whistle would blow and the wrestlers would grab each others' cloth belts and try to turn their opponent over onto the ground. It was neat watching some of the younger guys turn the older kids down quickly! It's a sport of speed and balance!

A good part of our day was watching the performances. The performances were put on from the tiny preschoolers to the high school students of various schools on the island. Each age group had their own costume and dance. The youngest group's song and dance resembled something much like the "Wiggles" on TV. Uh.... NO! I am NOT a Fan!

These kids were really cute! Too bad I didn't have a clue as to what they were singing about! I'm guessing that all the orange and purple in their costumes had something to do with the sweet potatoes!

Overall, we had a fun day immercing ourselves in the Okinawan culture! Oh yeah, and I did try some octopus for the first time. It's one of their "fair foods". They make this hushpuppy-like batter with green and red peppers, and bury a small chunk of octopus in it and deep-fry it. There was so much yummy fried batter around it, I didn't even taste it!! I've learned here that it you aren't sure about liking a certain food, like sushi, raw fish, .... just add wasabi to it or dunk it in a batter n deep fry it!!! ;)

Pizza In The Sky

I recently had the privilege of going with the boys on a fieldtrip (when I HAD freedom) to Pineapple Park and Pizza In the Sky.

Not too many people know about this place due to its location and difficulty getting there, however, because of it's view and the food, word gets around. Pizza in the Sky is a family owned restaurant on the mountain side with a great view of the island, hence, the name. The road to the restaurant is a winding ascent on a one way street, well, in the states it's a one way street! The roads here are so small!

They hand you these fans, which I thought was some neat memoir to take home, but it was actually their menu!

Cristie tries to eat her pizza Japanese style! Yes, they actually eat pizza with chopsticks!~

The restaurant itself is quite small, but they have a tatamy porch and a large cabana where people can eat and enjoy the view. This is part of our "crew".

It gets quite hot up here, though it was in the 80's for us that day. We got to style some hats given to us to borrow for our lunchtime that day! This hat is nearly as big as this little guy~! Daniel thought he'd just take on the whole load!

Peace Arch

Our visit to the Peace Prayer Memorial Park in Okinawa was a sobering one. The names of all those who died during the Battle For Okinawa were engraved on the walls in the center of the park. We toured the grounds where memorials and tombs were made for the fallen Japanese and Okinawans. The tombs were all different and some, very ornate. The park sat on the edge of some high cliffs overlooking the East China Sea. Here we are standing under the Peace Arch, which is to signify peace between Japan/Okinawa and the USA. They pride themselves on being a peaceful people and nation.

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!