Chad's Birthday

On Friday, Chad turned 24! He skyped with his mom and sister on Wednesday night while he opened the gift his family sent. He got 2 Breaking Bad Tshirts and Spicy Garlic sauce from Buffalo Wild Wings. Chad loves the spicy garlic wings from there so we're going to try to recreate them here! On Friday morning, he skyped with my Mom while opening her gift to him. She got him rechargeable battery pack and charger for his Xbox controllers. I got Chad a pair of Oakley sunglasses, that he has already been wearing for the past month. Chad doesn't like cake, but what's a birthday without cake? I saw a cake made out of beer cans on pinterest so last minute I decided to put it together for him. I had to make it while he was gone, so my only opportunity was on Thursday while he was at work since he had Friday off. He came home from work and saw it on the counter. He loved it! Best birthday cake ever he said.


Since Chad had the day off we wanted to go explore Japan since we really haven't got to venture very far from base. We wanted to go see some waterfalls, so I found some online that people recommended. The one we wanted to go to required you to hike through water all the way there, so we knew we would need water shoes. We went to the BX but all we could find were kid sizes. I am sure I could have fit in a pair, but Chad definitely would not. So then we went to Kadena Marina, where they sell scuba gear. They were pretty much out of all sizes of scuba shoes. We just weren't having any luck! They told us to check out another watersport store on the near by Army base, but we didn't really want to spend big bucks on water shoes right now. All we wanted was cheap water shoes. It's frustrating living on an island sometimes because things go out of stock and takes a while to get here!

So after we realized we were going to have to spend all day searching for water shoes, we decided to just go in the direction of the waterfall and see what else we may find on the way. The waterfall that we wanted to go to was past Nago which is on the northern end of the island. There is a road called 58 that our base is on, it leads north and south. So we got on 58 and headed north toward Nago. Our island is only 67 miles long from top to bottom, so you would think it wouldn't take very long to get places. Wrong! The max speed limit on the island is 80 clicks, which is equal to 50mph and that's on the expressway! On a road like 58, the speed limit is usually 60 clicks which is about 38mph.

On the way there, I looked up on my phone places to see by Nago. I found that Pineapple Park was near there and I knew it was a place I wanted to see during our time here. After driving for about 2 hours, we found it. We thankfully didn't even get lost, the directions I had were pretty easy to follow. We paid 600¥ each to get in the park, which is about $8.00. The first thing we did was get our picture taken with a pineapple mascot. It was one of those things where they take your picture and then try to get you to buy it. After that, we hopped in a moving pineapple vehicle and had a tour of the pineapple fields. Then we walked through indoors where we saw how the pineapple went from whole to canned. It was pretty cool to see. After that, we got to taste a whole bunch of pineapple flavored foods including wine. We also got to taste the pineapple that they grow there, it was sooo good! We bought a pineapple to enjoy at home. Overall, it was a pretty cool experience and I'm glad we did it.