Saturday, May 25, 2013

Okinawa {part 1}

I'm skipping today's prompt to bring you part one of our most recent vacation recap.  4 days after Jason finished his command we boarded a plane for Okinawa.  Of course my husband made friends with/entertained the child across the aisle from us.  She just thought he was HYSTERICAL!


If you've been following this blog for a while you may remember that when we first received orders for Japan that they were originally for Okinawa.  I spent months researching the island life only to have our orders changed to Camp Zama at the last minute.  At the time, I was devastated, I had my heart set on exploring Okinawa.  Now, I'm certain that God knew what he was doing (as he always does) and I'm where I'm supposed to be but I've been dreaming of visiting Oki since we first thought we were going to live there.  We were only able to spend a week there and there was no time to do everything I had on my original Okinawa to do list so I chose my top two and settle for 5 days of glorious beach bumming...or so I planned.

Our first 3 nights in Oki were spent in the cabins on Torii Beach which is on the teeny tiny Army base there.  The cabins were nothing to write home about, I didn't even take a single photo of them.

There weren't any utensils so I had to eat my breakfast with chopsticks.

The very first thing I wanted to do when I arrived in Okinawa was get a pedicure.  The salon here sucks and I haven't ever bothered to attempt a pedi off base but I've heard that there is a place in Oki that has the-best-pedicures-EVER so I had to go.


Jason was less than thrilled with the idea but he loves me so he went along.


They give you this huge book full of design options and paint them on with acrylic paint.  I'm normally a solid color kinda gal but when in Oki, right?  I couldn't choose just one so I randomly opened the book and pointed.  I was pretty happy with my selection.

The second thing I wanted to do was make sea salt.  We headed up the road and were greeted with this gorgeous view.

The salt making process is pretty much what you'd expect, boil salt water until the water evaporates and you're left with salt.

At the end we both went home with little jars of sea salt that we made ourselves.  Strangely enough, they actually both had very different flavors.  Perhaps "flavor" is the wrong word...maybe "intensity" is better.  Jason's had a much stronger flavor than mine did.  I can't wait to cook with it!

 After a pedi and salt making, we bee-lined for the beach and stayed there for a couple days.

Jason mostly snorkeled (you can kind of see him in the photo above, he's the tiny black speck in the water) while I hung out with this guy and a good book.

We did venture out to one of the other military bases to check out their giant PX and eat some Chili's and we also had dinner at American Village one night.

I also got to have dinner with Kara, one of my favorite bloggers/friends!  Her and I were stationed in Missouri at the same time but didn't know each other, now we're both living in Japan (although different islands) and we're both heading to the same area when we leave here around the same time.  I'm glad to have met her (and her adorable children).





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