{Okinawa World and other things...}

This is from our tour we took around okinawa from ABOVE. I sat in the front and he even let me control the plane temporarily until shane LOST it. I guess my steering was bumpy b/c i totally made shane lose control and he puked. Poor guy. honestly, i was close to puking as well and was soooooo glad when we finally landed.

This picture is when Aunt Mandi was here. What would a visit be with a JENKS without basketball?!?! Definitely not the same.

We took Mandi to Forest Adventure Park where they have the ziplining and some other fun things. This place is a blast. We had tons of fun here. This is a picture shane took of me getting ready to climb up to the platform.

We indulged this night, after eating sushi. We ate some Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake. I am not usually a fan of cheesecake but this was pretty good. :)

Here we are at the Sushi -go- round. We had mandi try some of our favorites. I discovered my NEW favorite. The kind of sushi i enjoy the most is nigiri sushi. It's a little clump or rice with raw fish on top. I do not like the rolled up sushi because i don't like seaweed. It tastes fishy to me and i don't like the fishy taste. So, my favorite Nigiri Sushi is Aurora Salmon. OH SO YUMMY!

Tanner clinging to Aunt Mandi. He is afraid of heights.

Here we are at Araha Beach. We enjoy playing on most the kids playgrounds here as well. Japanese playgrounds are the best. This particular one is right on the beach.

We took our boys to the Kodomo -no -kuni zoo. It's a fun zoo that we all enjoy.

Oh, here is a random picture of my homemade bread. I no longer BUY bread. I make my own each week. I make 3 loaves and it lasts the whole week. It's the BEST homemade WHOLE WHEAT FLAX bread in the WORLD. We love it.

Here are the Eisa drummers at Okinawa World. There was some other cool stuff, but the lady told me to stop taking pictures b/c they aren't allowed. I didn't know, but funny thing is that right in this picture you can see the sign that says no cameras are allowed. haha! Anyway, its lots of fun watching Eisa Drummers. They move their legs all over , as you can see to the left of the picture and they do cool twirl jumps in the air.

Shane and i tried FISH THERAPY (Dr. Fish). It was on our way out of Okinawa World. You put your feet in and the small little fish surround your feet and eat all the dead skin on your feet. I didn't know what to expect. It tickled. It was this tiny vibrating feeling from each fish, plus it TICKLED. It was hilarious. They loved Shane's feet a lot more than they loved mine.

At Okinawa World they also make glassware. We watched the process and it was so cool. In this picture below the glass is very hot , which is why it is red hot. It's amazing how fast they can go. I could watch it all day long.

Oh, they have these kind of displays EVERYWHERE in Okinawa. We try to take advantage of them b/c the kids love it.

Another one in the cave.

We went through such a cool cave here. It was the biggest and longest cave i have ever experienced! I was amazed. It was fairly humid. We walk on this platform and most of the time there is about 1-2 feet deep of water underneath us. They have the biggest stalagmite here in all of Japan. Stalactites and Stalagmites here are definitely a site to see! In the water you would see tiny little fish. There was even a small waterfall in there with some water pools.

Another one! :)

We went to Okinawa World's snake show. It was fun watching! At the end of the show you can take a picture with this LARGE snake. We each took a picture. I put Gavin's in here b/c he was brave enough to do it alone AND his face went so red. It was so cute. The poisonous snake here in Okinawa is called the Habu snake. They showed us a habu and we saw pictures of what happens if it bites you. It's SCARY! BUT apparently the sea snakes are more venomous than the Habu is! Crazy. The mongoose is an enemy to the Habu. It can kill the Habu. The island brought mongoose here to control the Habu population, BUT turns out the mongoose became more interested in feeding on other things so now they are trying to control the mongoose population.

This is called a sanshin. This is the Okinawan guitar. Three strings and you can see part of it is made of snake skin. You will hear the sanshin in most of the music here on the island.

Entrance to Okinawa WORLD. :)