Sunday Funday

Since we had headed north twice over the weekend, on Sunday we decided we would go check out Naha which is south of the base. It didn't take us near as long to get to Naha as it did to Nago! Naha is where the airport is, so technically we have already been there once. We flew in at 10PM at night after 24 hours of traveling so I couldn't remember a thing of what we had seen on our first trip through Naha! We just drove with really no end point. Eventually we drove so far and weren't seeing much so we turned around. I had heard about Kokusai Street which is a street with a bunch of little shops on it. My directions said there would be a sign for it, but I missed it on the way there. So on our way back, I was more attentive and we found it! Once we found the street, the next challenge was trying to find some place to park. There were a bunch of pay lots but we weren't really sure how they worked. We pulled into one and I got out to look at the machine where you pay. I wasn't sure if we were suppose to get a ticket and then when we came back insert the ticket and pay or what we were suppose to do?! So, I told Chad to just park and we'd figure it out. Lucky for us, some Japanese people pulled into the lot and just walked away. So we figured that's how you do it!


Kokusai Street reminded me a lot of a tourist street. You know those streets in tourist towns where every store has the same exact trinkets? That's what this was. We walked in a few stores on the way down and then walked in a few more on the way back. All the stores had music and bright colors, it was fun! After we shopped a little bit, we headed back to our car. We went up to the machine again and typed in our parking spot number and it told us how much we owed. Chad had to pull over this green bar that locked his car into place. If we hadn't paid, then he wouldn't of been able to get out. It's actually not a bad parking system, it's better than paying someone to sit there and take people's money! After we left there, we headed back to Kadena. It wasn't a very eventful Sunday but it was nice to do some more exploring!