Anniversary Weekend & More!

I finally have enough to write about to compose a blog post! It's actually pretty overdue as I haven't updated since before Christmas. We had a very nice Christmas, despite being so far away from home! I got to skype with my family on Christmas morning as they opened their gifts and Chad got to do the same with his family. It was pretty nice. It would have been nicer to be home though!

We celebrated our 1 year anniversary on January 6th. We started off the day by going to the breakfast buffet at the Officer's Club on base. Ever since we've came to the island, people have been telling us that we need to go to the Sunday brunch at the Officer's Club. It's $20 a person so we haven't really had the urge to go until we decided to splurge on our anniversary. They had quite the variety of food. They had all the typical breakfast foods but they also had lunch food like brisket, mashed potatoes, chicken, etc. They even had sushi and crab legs! Chad and I aren't seafood people but we decided that we would try it. After trying it, I'm still not a fan! Chad didn't really like it too much either.

After brunch, we went to a place called Okinawa World. Here, we got to go to a Habu museum where we saw a bunch of different creepy snakes. They even had a Habu show but we showed up right before it was going to start and it was super crowded in there so we didn't stick around for it. I bet it was pretty cool though. Our favorite part about Okinawa World was the cave that we got to walk through. It's a 5000 meter long cave that was formed over 300,000 years ago. It was pretty neat to see!

Later that night we went to dinner at a steak restaurant called Four Seasons. This is another one of those places that we've heard really good things about but have neglected to go up until now since it is pretty expensive! We both ordered steaks, which came with a bunch of different side dishes. We had lots of food! They cook the food all right in front of you. That was pretty cool! Chad said it was the best steak he has ever had. It was good! It did come with a hefty price tag though, so we probably won't be back too often! We ended our anniversary by walking around American Village and stopping to get ice cream at Blue Seal. It was the perfect way to spend our first anniversary!

This weekend, we did some more exploring. Chad wanted to see some more caves so he looked up a couple more caves to see. I found directions and we started heading south. We reached one place but we couldn't find a cave there. It was actually pretty creepy! The place we were looking for was called Kin Kannon-do Temple, well the directions I had took us to Koshi Kannon-do Temple. Who knew there was a difference? lol Soo we go to see a creepy temple.

Go to find out, we had already passed the other temple that we were looking for so we started to head back. We found the right place but when we walked up to it, it was kind of awkward. There were not really any signs pointing to where to go or anything. I had read there was an admission fee to go in the cave, but we really didn't see anywhere to pay. The cave was off to side with no one around, so Chad walked down in it a little ways. I said "Oh hell no" when I looked down in the cave, it was dark and creepy! So I let him go by himself lol. After he went down just a little way, we left. Maybe one day we'll have to go back and see the whole thing.

Today, we went to the Japanese Navy Underground Headquarters. It's a series of underground tunnels where the Japanese camped out during the Battle of Okinawa. Apparently the commanding officer and 175 of his staff committed suicide in the tunnels. It was pretty neat to see; they had all the rooms marked with Japanese and English signs. They even had a room where the commanding officer wrote his last telegraph.

On our way to the Underground Headquarters, we saw an outlet mall off in the distance. It looked pretty neat so we decided to find it on our way home. I'm glad we did! There are no "malls" like we're used to here. This is the first one that we've found that actually reminded me of a mall back home. It had a lot of high end stores, like Gucci, Coach, Michael Kors, Armani, etc. That kind of surprised me! We looked around in a few stores and just looked what the mall had to offer. It was raining, so we'll probably go back another day to see some more.

That's all I have for my blog for now. What an exhausting post! Hope all is well with all my readers! If you have any questions about Japan, let me know! I'd love to write a blog post answering some questions that people may have!