{So many things to do in so little time}

My mom and dad came to Okinawa. We had so much fun and were so sad to see them go.  They arrived the night before Easter Sunday.  We put the boys to bed at 7:00 p.m. and woke them up at about 10:00 p.m. and went to the airport to pick them up.

Here are a bunch of pictures of some of the things we did. The first picture is at the Fish Market.  It's located right next to the ocean. They open up at 10:00 a.m. just after the fishermen arrive with their catches of the day.  You will find a wide variety here. Octopus, Squid, shrimp, colorful fish, etc.  You can try samples of raw fish and other weird looking things.  Here the boys are watching the men filet all the fish.  They open the fish from the bottom, clean out all the guys. He passes it to the next guy who chops the fish in half and and chops his head in half. Then he passes it to the next guy who gets all the meat off the fish, and so on. Gavin had a piece of the fish fly onto his arm. He was kind of grossed out. haha!

My baby brother also came from South Korea.  It was so good to finally see him!  He teaches English to the South Korean kids. It's a pretty good job for him and he really likes South Korea. I really want to go visit him there.

We took a nice drive further up North on the Island. The northern part of the island is less inhabited and is absolutely gorgeous. My dad saw it and said "You don't have to go to Hawaii. This is just as beautiful. BUT Hawaii does have the volcanic stuff there that Okinawa doesn't have."  And i guess the mountains are a bit higher in Hawaii as well. We stopped at a few random beaches on our drive. We found a few AWESOME LARGE shells....well, my mom found them. I will find some before our time is up here. We also found MANY sand dollars. There was some great shells to choose from.

We went to the Japanese Naval Underground Tunnels. That was quite a sight to see and experience. I found all the history of it very interesting.

Here we are eating at Nepal's Spice Kitchen. It's an AWESOME Indian restaurant.  That means a variety of curry. There are many varieties of curry. We ate here TWICE while they were here because it's so good. Naan bread is the BEST.

Being silly. I think that you might notice in most of the pictures that i am in i am always making a goofy face. I look ridiculous.

Here is another beach we went to at LOW tide. We went to see the tidal pools and all the fish life that's inside of those. This was a wonderful spot to see lots of sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and star fish. TONS. It was absolutely amazing all the things we saw.

Here we are eating at a little restaurant. A lot of restaurants here have tatami mats to sit on, just like we are doing. It's traditional Japanese. Most restaurants have this plus the option of sitting at a table.

This picture here is Easter Sunday morning. The boys just discovered their easter baskets and went outside to play with what they got. They each received a new pair of swim goggles, a squirt gun, and a hero cape.  Can you see their hero capes i made for them? I am so proud of myself, even though it wasn't my idea.

This picture below is from a little place called Ryukyu Mura. It's a place that has a variety of things to see. This was a really cool wall of fish. I had never seen anything like it so i had to take a picture.

There was a fun show they put on for us at Ryukyu Mura. They call it a "parade".  It's very different from the parades we are used to. :) They had dancers, Eisa Drummers, the emperor, the huge Shisa dog, etc. It was fun.

We went to a snake show here. I always get excited about going to shows and then once we get in i quickly realize that the show won't be in english. Then i get bummed out because i don't know what they are saying about the snakes or anything. I continually forget the language barrier until we sit down for the shows. It's kind of a bummer not knowing what they are saying.

Sitting on our tatami mats.

We went to Nakagusuku Castle. This castle was extraordinary. It's amazing really. It's one of the largest on the island and most well preserved. Lots of the castles on stuff on this island was destroyed during the war before they surrended in 1945. It's really sad. BUT this is still around and it was just amazing walking through it. And when you go to the very top of the castle, the view is AMAZING. You can look out and see the East China Sea on one side and look the other way and see the Pacific Ocean.

Amazing view...

This is a haunted hotel. It is located right next to the castle. It has an interesting story behind it.

We had to take my parents to the sushi go round bar. Shane and I have been a few times. My favorite things i the Aurora Salmon. LOVE. A variety of sushi comes around a conveyor belt and you choose what you want. When you are done you stack up your plates and they bring over a scanner and run the scanner from the top to the bottom. It can scan how much each plate costs. It's a fun spot.

My dad helped me get a few things started for my "garden". :) I really wanted grape tomatoes, yellow bell peppers, cilantro and basil. SO that is what i am growing. SO far they are growing fast and doing great. I can't wait to eat it all!

The parks in Japan are so fun. This is a thrilling one. You hang onto that bar right under shane's head , dangle there and then let go and you free fall for a minute. It's fun.

This is a cool spot we found over by the tidal pools. Again, this is LOW tide. You can see how high the tide usually gets.  This spot was awesome with lots of little openings in other areas in this cave. We want to go back to this jewel of a spot to explore some more.

We ate out at a restaurant almost everyday that my parents were here. We wanted to try all kinds of different foods, so we had lots of fun doing that AND i had fun not cooking. :)  We went to Dr. Fish. That's where you put your feet in water and the little fish come eat dead skin off your feet. That was hilarious watching my mom and dad. They went crazy the first few minutes, but then got used to it by the end. My mom and i went and got a pedicure done. Dad and Shane went and got a one hour massage.  Later, after brion arrived, we all went and got massages again.  The boys received an hour massage and mom and I received facials. The facial was AMAZING. I will be going there again. LOVED it!  I took my mom to some of the gift shops with stuff from all over Asia. We went to Okinawa World again and walked through the cave. It's an amazing cave. Shane and I went for a few runs in the mornings and a bike ride. We watched the boys play in their basketball game.  My dad surprised shane with an awesome racing game for us for the Xbox. It's called Forza 4. Brion and Shane had tons of fun playing that late into the evenings. We just had tons of fun with them here. We really hope they come back again.


Oooooohhhh. Here is our arrival for our 1/2 marathon. This took place the day after my parents left.  They had lots of vendors with the foods that Nakijin Village eats. The run started in Nakijin Village.  They recommended that we arrive to our run 4 hours early because of traffic and parking.  So, we did.  We grabbed some lunch.  The race started at 4:20 p.m.  They call it the Magic Hour Run. They call it that because they have us run across a mile and a half bridge as the sun is setting and it's beautiful. I knew the sun wouldn't be out because the whole day was cloudy and raining on and off. Anyway, we decided to eat some Yakisoba. One of my favorites and one the Okinawa's favorite and most loved foods. It's basically noodles with some veggies and pork in it.

If you look really close you can see WAAAAAY out there a bridge. Do you see it? It's a long one. Well, we started from about this point and ran through mountains to reach that bridge, cross it and come back. I have a long story to tell you about this race.

In the picture down here we are all happy before the race. Our faces at the end were quite opposite. :) haha! Here is the story.... I was well hydrated. I didn't doubt that i would be fine in that department. I was worried about having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the run. I was worried about a bathroom being available when i needed one.  Turns out, it wasn't a passing thought during the race. It was a needless worry.  As soon as the race started, the rain started. It rained on us the whole 13 miles. It got heavier in the second half. Also, my chest pain decided to start at the beginning of the race too. I have no idea WHY. I don't know what it is, but i will get chest pain in my upper chest. It's extremelly uncomfortable and feels REALLY tight in my chest, almost painful. It really makes it hard to want to do anything when i get it and it goes away when i lie down. So, as the race went on it got worse and worse. It was extremely bothersome. I was feeling GREAT the first half of the race. I had a great pace going that i felt like i could have kept the whole time, until my knee started hurting. It started hurting maybe around mile 6-7. Not too bad though. It gradually got worse with each mile. By mile 10 it was KILLING me. Let me tell you, the last three miles were the longest THREE miles of my existence. I have never experienced such a long three miles.  My knee was hurting so bad and it kept feeling like it was going to give out on me and it tried a few times. I fought through it. Shane tried running with me the whole race and if he got ahead he eventually stopped and waited for me. Well, he was staying with me the last 3 miles because he could tell i was in pain.  I had to stop a few times to move my legs around a bit. It helped a tiny bit. My left knee hurt too, but nothing like my right knee. That's the one knee that i always have problems with WHEN i do have problems. It has been quite awhile since that happened, so i wasn't really worried about that.  The rain by this point was dumping, the wind was blowing pretty crazy, my chest pain reached its max pain and my knee was killing. I felt like i couldn't go on. My whole body wanted me to stop, but i mentally kept trying to tell myself i had to keep going and that i was really close, but knowing i was so close still didn't help because it actually fell SOOOOOOO far away.  Shane let me grab onto his arm and tried supporting my weight the last 2 miles of the run as we ran together.  He kept telling me "come on ash, we are almost there. let's do this". I was trying so hard.  It was so mentally challenging. I fought and fought that last mile.  I started getting tears in my eyes at the end b/c i mentally reached my end.  When i stopped running, it was almost worse than running because my knee  felt like it was locking up. It didn't want to support me and it didn't want to bend. I could HARDLY walk. I sat down on the puddled sidewalk because when i bent my knee the pain went away. I just sat in the pooring rain in a puddle. I didn't care. People were staring at me...hahaha!  I didn't care. Shortly after, shane started calling my name telling me to follow him. We took shelter under the bathroom while the rain continued to poor down. I started shivering. I was so cold. We both were. We still had to go catch the bus that would take us back to our car.  We had to WALK in the pooring rain to get there. I couldn't walk. I couldn't see because the rain kept building up in my eyes. And with contacts in that's bad b/c my contacts might fall out. We walked through the pooring rain to get to the bus. I was so glad when we finally got on the bus. BUT then the bus dropped us off and we had to walk a little bit to get to our car.  It was DOWN pooring at this point. Shane was guiding me since i couldn't walk or see. hahahaha! This is so hilarious. Anyway, i FINALLY jumped in the car. We changed in the car and blasted the heat. We were SOOOOOOO glad to be in the car, out of the rain and WARM. :)  IT was quite an experience!!!  The run was really incredible though.  We ran through little villages and the people of those villages were out on the street banging on their drums, some were playing their japanese music, some were chanting the word, GANBATTE(good luck)....There were so many cheering us along the entire run. It was awesome support and the run was just beautiful even though the sun wasn't out. It was hilly. Maybe that contributed to my knee pain. Who knows. I would do it again.  I would just take lots of pain reliever beforehand. Nothing beats the feeling of a race. Sort of. There were about 4,000 people in the race. It really was incredible, aside from the pain. :) It was a good bonding experience for Shane and I too. I loved that part the most.:)