Our trip to Okinawa has been good so far. We left Tuesday night and went to Komatsu, the city we flew out of. We could've taken an early morning train, but we didn't want to get up too early. Komatsu is an interesting city, because it is not that big, but has a nice airport, and a brand new train station. I wonder if it was used a lot during the World Cup or something.

When we went to the airport on Wednesday we ran into another JET from Toyama, Will, and his girlfriend Michi. Will's birthday is also next week, so they are doing the same thing as us. The flight was uneventful, but totally full, which we didn't expect. There was a large group of old Japanese men on the plane, most of whom had golf bags and were part of a tour. We mostly stayed on Okinawa island, the central island of a large chain of islands (many of which are so far north or south that traveling to them would have been inconvenient for us during our 5 day trip). At the airport in Naha (the capital city), we found an A&W restaurant, which we ate at. It was quite nice, because we could get root beer there and you can't normally find root beer in Japan. I got a root beer float, which was good, except they put big ice cubes in it, which meant almost no root beer.

We took the new monorail into Naha and got to our hotel (also new) easily. It is quite large with a big bed, and belongs to our favorite chain, Toyoko Inn. A note about the monorail: it is Okinawa's only rail system. All the rest were destroyed during the war. This made traveling in Okinawa a bit strange for us, since the rest of Japan practically lives on the railways. We wandered around the main street, Kokusai-dori (International Street) for awhile and then stopped to get some tacos. Of course, Will and Michi walk into the tacos restaurant right after us. It was pretty funny. So we talked with them and found out they were going to the same place as us the next day, except they were going to drive. They offered to take us with them, and we graciously accepted. Then we split up and we went shopping for a bit, before going back to the hotel and resting. Our flight left at 8:35am, so we had to get up early that day. After our rest, we went to dinner at a steak restaurant. It was one of those restaurants where they cut up and cook the food in front of you on the table. We normally call those Japanese steak houses, but they called it an American-style steakhouse. Go figure. Victoria had never been to a restaurant like that before, so she liked it a lot. Her eating pleasure was enhanced by the cute little Japanese boy who was seated at our table and kept smiling at her. Afterwards we were really full and went back to the hotel and collapsed.

I'll write about today later, but tomorrow we are planning on going to Zamami Island, where we will go to the beach and do some whale watching.