Mom and Trish visit Okinawa

Trish liked Okinawa so much that she came back with mom. We've been having a lot of fun and definitely staying busy. We've been snorkeling several times and mom and Trish have nearly become professionals.



Last week was Mika's birthday, so we took her ziplining. There was lots of screaming many new bruises, but a fun day! Mom and Nate went sightseeing at Cape Zanpa while we ziplined, and mom was feeling very statuesque.



We did some more sightseeing and hiked to Tadake falls through a river. The water was cold and refreshing on a very hot day!



We tried to hit all of our favorite restaurants and izakayas, but there wasn't enough time to eat everything! At the disco ball izakaya we ordered Bakudan Takoyaki. Takoyaki is octopus balls and bakudan means bomb. Instead of a piece of octopus, the bomb has a chunk of wasabi. Trish got the bomb! Notice her face in the next photo. At the market, this man LOVED Nate's beard and insisted on hugging him profusely.



Of course we took mom to karaoke and to see some Eisa dancing, which is traditional Ryukyuan dancing used to popularize local music. .



The week went by very quickly, but we had a ton of fun!

Drivers license saga complete!

Thanks to Nate's time and diligence, I passed my driver test on the second try! It is actually really easy once you understand everything they are looking for. I might have passed my first time, but I was too nervous and drove too fast (43 km/hr instead of 40km/hr). Who knew?

The instructor was more surprised than I was and kept looking down at his paper, saying "One check, very good. Only 2nd challenge. One check!" It took him so long to tell me that I passed that Nate was sure he was explaining what I had done wrong and that I had failed.

In other belated news...we splurged on 200 grams of cream cheese for $4 and Nate made us a birthday cheesecake! Oishi des!!!



We also survived Typhoon Muifa. It was a very slow moving storm, so we had a lot of rain and a lot of wind, but everything was fine. See the video below...we took it before the really big winds started.