marathon day

not literal marathon.  we spent saturday driving around the southern end of the island.  in 14 hours, we visited 5 "castles", a glass factory, Peace Memorial Park, and a couple other random spots. 

around Gushikawa-jo:

glass factory:

Peace Memorial Park contains dozens of separate memorials, including the cornerstone of peace, which lists the names of the 240,000 people killed in the Battle of Okinawa:

Itokazu-jo:

the Honda Fit we rented for the week came with a gps.  i've never believed in using navigation systems; generally i think that if you pay attention to the real world, and use a map when necessary, you should be fine.  but the gps turned out to be our friend when the maps we had didn't have quite enough detail and since lots of roads aren't really named or at least not marked with names.  having the gps allowed us to take some "shortcuts", including this very narrow, very steep road (and yes, there were some vehicles coming the other direction) up to the next castle:

but we made it up to Tamagusuku-jo, parked the car, and were headed up the trail when we spotted... a mongoose.  we have video of it, which we haven't uploaded yet, but no pictures unfortunately.

we also stopped at Chinen-jo, Sefa Utaki, Ozato, Shuri-jo, and Urasoe-jo.  mostly those pictures are a lot more trees and rocks.  but at Urasoe, when we had just come through a rain shower, we spotted the second rainbow of the day:

dinner was at Peter's Place, a Chinese restaurant that was one of e's favorites as a kid and is run by the parents of a former classmate.

friday

we started the day by visiting the neighborhood e grew up in.  this is the bus that he occasionally took when he was little:

this is where his house used to be, but the current homes are newer.  while we were looking around, the neighbors across the street came out.  it's the same family that lived there in the early 80's, and the woman remembered e's family.  

giant slides at pipeline road park:

view from Kakazu Park:

you can't tell from this picture, but this (where the above picture was taken from) is painted like a globe:

Nakagusuku Castle:

at Zakimi Castle:

we finished the day with dinner at Teguchi Beach, but we forgot to bring the camera :(

to Okinawa

wednesday we flew down to Okinawa; the airport in Naha is filled with orchids.

we picked up our rental car and set off - doing our best to adjust to driving on the left side of the road.

we are staying for the week in a guest room at the school that e attended roughly grades 1-7, which is in Yomitan, about an hour drive from the airport.  thursday morning we were up early and headed southeast, driving across the causeway and on to Miyagi Island and Ikei Island.  on our way back, we stopped at an old castle.

katsuren-jo:

 somehow this snail found its way up to the castle.

we met up with some old friends of e's family for lunch and spent the afternoon with them, soaking our feet at the hot springs and then going to a game at their CAJ's high school soccer tournament.  it was a crazy game.  it went into overtime at 1-1.  near the end of overtime, CAJ was down 3-2 and was driving for the goal when the opposing team's keeper got a yellow card, and CAJ got a penalty kick.  in high school soccer, a yellow card means you're removed from the game temporarily, so another player stepped in as keeper while CAJ took the penalty kick with the opportunity to tie the score again.  but the substitute keeper guessed right and blocked the shot - CAJ lost.

day 2

we walked a whole lot.  we started at Tokyo station and went to the imperial palace gardens.  from there we wandered around downtown, got some lunch, and then walked through Akihabara and Ochanamizu.  after we finally headed back to our "home" neighborhood, we walked out to where e's house used to be.  

downtown Tokyo to the imperial palace gardens:

downtown Tokyo

electric town in Akihabara:

shrine in Ochanamizu:

Russian Orthodox church in Ochanamizu:

Japan!

we arrived in Tokyo on sunday evening after a 13 hour flight on delta.  remember the days when seats on airplanes didn't have the nice headrests and everyone watched the same couple of terrible movies on a handful of large screens?  delta is into vintage airline travel, so that's what we got on this trip.  but all went well, and customs was a breeze - not exactly a ton of foreigners stopping in Tokyo at the moment.  e navigated us through three train connections to get to Higashi Kurume, where we're staying with friends for the first couple of days.

monday morning we made our way to CAJ, the school where e attended 8th grade.  on the way, we made a stop at mister donut, where we ran into e's camp counselor from one summer.  after looking around CAJ, we spent the rest of the day wandering around Ikebukuro, Harajuku, and Shinjuku.

lunch in Ikebukuro:

some crazy t-shirts for sale in Harajuku:

our favorite t-shirt!

Meiji Shrine in Harajuku:

and the weirdest product we found all day.  this was printed on a pillow at an arcade place in Shinjuku:

and more photos are on flickr!

and we're off

well, almost.  we leave for Japan in about 15 hours.  we are pretty much all packed and are probably about to fall into a dead sleep after all the running around this week.

this is the first real vacation that we've taken together since...i think since we spent a few days in southern California in 2008 after i worked at a conference in San Diego.  plus the eight and a half months in Syria in 2008-09 which technically wasn't vacation but, you know.

definitely a first

i ran a 5k this weekend with the Komen Race for the Cure.  i don't have an official time for it (the thought of running the "competitive" 5k with "real" runners stressed me out way too much, so i ran without a chip), but i think i finished in the ballpark of 37 minutes.  hardly speedy, but i had done enough prep so that i definitely felt like i could do this - and more! - again.  i don't know if i'll ever make it as far as my rock star sister-in-law, but it feels better than i thought it would to try.