Okinawa: Churaumi Aquarium

Hello there. This is Big Sis and I am going to tell you guys all about me and my families adventure to the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. The Aquarium was so fun because we got to go with our friends, the Schwartz!

What got me and my siblings heads to prick up towards the idea of going to the aquarium was learning that this aquarium was the 2nd largest aquarium in the world. That fact really made us want to go to this aquarium.

The ride to the aquarium was right after we went to the waterfall, so it only took about 30 minutes to drive there. After parking and walking to the aquarium part of the whole amusement park, we bought our tickets, got in, and started to look round. The first think we saw was a tank filled with Sea Stars and Sea Slugs. When you hear the word "Sea Slug", you automatically think of a super big, slimy, and disgusting thing. But, that really isn't the case. Sea Slugs are big, yes, but they are actually very surprisingly super soft and very squishy. Yes, I touched one, and I thought it was the weirdest feeling ever.

After a couple minutes touching the Sea Stars and Sea Slugs, we continued to walk deeper into the Aquarium. The next exhibit was a very big tank. The tank held a very large section of coral plants and many sea animals. Their where so many different types of coral and sea creatures. The coral ranged between tiny purple seedlings to 3 foot long finger coral.

Then comes the animals. The animals ranged from a very tiny neon blue fish, that looked like Dory, from Finding Nemo, all the way to a 4 1/2 foot long eels. The eel was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen, and there were 2 of them! My favorite part of this specific tank was all the colors and the fish in there. It was so beautiful, except for the 2 giant eels. But, it was still super cool.

About 20 minutes later, we moved onto another tank that was a little bit bigger than the other tank. The tank also had a coral reef, but a few more interesting sea animals. The animals where still the same small fish, but instead of eels, there where giant fish the size of Little A. Dad found the fish first and started to call it "Jumbo". Dad also has some very good searching eyes and found a fish that had a straight up mustache. He started to call that fish "Mustache Marsh". I honestly have never seen a fish with a mustache before.

There was also a green sea turtle in the tank too. It wasn't that big, but it was super cool to still see a sea turtle for the first time in a very long time. It was also super cool how close it got towards us. We also saw many other very large sized fish and many more different colored coral. My favorite part of this tank was the turtle.

When we wanted to continue, we walked into a room that looked like a theater, but instead of a TV screen, we saw the tank which wad the home of the 2 whale sharks, 3 manta rays, 7 sting rays, 10 different types of sharks, dozens of huge fish, and a pod of those silver fish that you can only find in the open ocean. When we saw all the animals in the tank, we all flipped out. It was the coolest thing we have every seen.

Just before things couldn't get any better, we found out that 5 minutes later, the whale sharks where going to have "Feeding time". We really wanted to see "Feeding time", so we stayed to watch. The first thing that we saw where dead squid that where the sharks food that sank to the bottom of the tank where they had there feast. That was really disgusting in my opinion. The fish where feed something. I was really not sure what. Then the whale sharks where feed, I think, very large portions of fish, plankton, squid, and other things. The sharks would come over and simply open their mouth, and let everything be sucked into their mouths. Water and all (the water would shoot out of their gills afterwards!).

After watching the whales have their dinner, we started to keeping walking toward the next tanks. The tanks where the simple things such as jelly fish, crabs, lobsters, and many deep sea animals that where the strangest thing in the world. They looks absolutely disgusting! There was one tank that had the largest lobsters in the world(in my opinion)! The lobsters, from the top of their antenna to their very back feet, where the size of M&M's height from her toes to her head. There were very colorful and very gross.

After the very interesting, and disgusting tanks, we got to the end of the aquarium. There where more very interesting things to see and do at the end. There where many real and dead things to see such as a dead giant squid, a dead mega mouth shark(half of it was dissected so you could see the inner insides of the shark), dead deep sea animals in jars, a whales tooth(baleen is the proper word for a whales tooth), and a dead Basking shark head that was decapitated from its body. Even though some of this stuff sound not that good, it was actually pretty cool.

After we where done with the aquarium, we bought our magnet that we will add to our collection, and we headed home. I loved the Aquarium so much!

Okinawa: Cape Hero & Kijoka Falls

Okuma Military Resort is in the Northern part of Okinawa, so we decided to check out Cape Hero and the Kijoka Falls.  We spent all day today with the Schwartz!  It was so wonderful to have great friends with us.  When we got to Cape Hero, we found a huge parking lot and lots of cliffs.  There was a covered patio area, so we got our lunches out and had a picnic lunch. 

Cape Hero is so very beautiful.  We came during low tide, so we could see the coral reefs!  It was a sight to behold!  All of us wanted to go down and explore the tide pools and the reef, but there was no way down where we were at.  Luckily, though, the cliffs gave us a perfect vantage point.  

Another reason Cape Hero is so beautiful, is because it is surrounded by a National Forest.  All around us were beautiful mountains, beaches and so much green.

Okinawa is much different then America.  Japan must trust their citizens to not do anything stupid, because at some points on our walk around the area, there were straight drop offs.  I has holding Little Monster's hand super tight for fear that he would just start running and go off a cliff.  I enjoyed the freedom, as I jumped off rocks to get to a cliff on the far side of the Cape.  The cliff had a great view of the ocean's reefs.  I will admit, there were some points when I was jumping over nothing but a 100 foot drop into a rocky reef, that I was a little scared and questioning my actions.  

Across from the patio where we had our picnic lunch, was a little restaurant/cafe.  Kevin went over and saw an Okinawa ice treat, so he bought a few for all of us to share!  It was so different and so very delicious! 

It was like flavored shaved ice, with a blue ice cream type consistency something in the middle.  I'm pretty sure it was taro or coconut, it was so very delicious!  Especially on such a hot day!  All the kids really loved it, especially Monster!  He couldn't get bites fast enough and would get frustrated if a second went by that he wasn't getting a bite.  

We explored around Cape Hero for a while.  There were statues and landmarks, small Buddha statues, and neat rock formations.

There was a nice pathway that went around the tip of the cape.  The pathway took you to some neat lookout points.

Poor Monster was so very hot.  He had super red cheeks and sweat beads on his nose.  

M&M was so cute.  She kept seeing all the beautiful look out points, and would ask over and over again if we could take her picture.  

We snapped a few pictures before we went on our way to the Kijoka Falls.

And here are our amazing Friends: Dustin, Corianne, Daphne & Rhett!  I am so glad there were with us, Little Monster absolutely loves Rhett.  They get along so well.  They kept walking and holding each other's hands.  Little A played so well with Daphne!  It was wonderful she had a friend with her.

Everyone had super red cheeks, and we were all sweating, so we decided to leave Cape Hero.  We went searching for the Kijoka Falls.  From what I read, there would be a small parking lot, and you could just walk a few steps to the Falls.

I got a little nervous when the directions turned us down a super small road with a lot of overgrown trees.  I was really worried that we were not going the right way.

I didn't want to get our rental car stuck in a ditch or down a cliff, so I told Kevin to park and wait, and I would run ahead to see if it lead anywhere.  Sure enough just down the bend, there was a small parking lot, and directly next to it was the Tori Gate that lead to the falls.

To get to the falls you walk down this super short narrow rock walkway.  There was a beautiful natural retaining wall that had moss and bugs and plants!  It just added to the beauty of the area.  

What makes this waterfall pretty neat, is that it is like a stairway waterfall.  You can see there is a small falls to the left, then it zigzags over to the right.  It looks super small in the pictures, but it was about 10-15 feet high.

There was a really nice pool at the bottom of the waterfall, but since we didn't have swimsuits and since I didn't know if it was bacteria-free, we opted to throw rocks and skip stones instead.  Poor Big Sis got a rock thrown right at her head by Rhett, she has such a hard head that the rock split in two.  Poor girl had a headache for the rest of the day.  Just a few minutes later, Little Monster threw a rock and it hit Rhett in the head.  We decided it was a good time to drop all rocks and head back to the cars.

Okinawa: Glass Bottom Boat

Hello. Big Sis here. I have a question for you, have you ever been in a glass bottom boat? I haven't, until now. I had the chance to be in my very first glass bottom boat ride in Okinawa. It was amazing and I am going to tell you why it was so amazing. We had the chance of going with the Schwartz, which made the experience even more amazing.

When I think of a glass boat boat, I think of a boat that has a bottom that is completely made out of glass. If you thought that for this ride, you are most definitely wrong. This boat only had about a 1' x 8' long piece of glass that you could see down on.

That doesn't seem like much, right? But I didn't care at the time because I was more amazed that I was going on my very first boat ride that you could see the bottom of the ocean. After getting on board and sitting down, we set off to the really deep part of the ocean.

The more farther we got from the shore, the most coral, fish, and sea animals we saw. It stayed at about 7 feet deep for a while, but then it went to 12 feet deep where the coral reef started. The coral reef was so beautiful.

There where so many different kinds and thousands of different fish species that we saw. It was so beautiful seeing a real live coral reef for myself. The boat driver stopped the boat over a really cool part of the coral reef and let everyone have a really good look at the bottom of the ocean.

I loved it so much much. After about 20 minutes of looking at the coral reef, we started to head back to the shore. After getting back, we played on the beach. It was an amazing adventure and one that I will never forget.

Okinawa: Okuma Beach Days

Hi there, big sis here again, this time I am going to tell you all about the beach that was in our hotel backyard.

While in Okinawa, we stayed in The Turtle Nest which is in Okuma Beach.

Me, M&M and Little A would go down to the beach as much as possible. The reason was because it was a really nice beach, and we have never been to a really good beach before in our lives. The first time we went to Okuma beach was the first day we got to Okuma. The first thing I went to was the water.

But, before we went, mom told us to never pick up any shells in the shape of a triangle in the water. They were dangerous, and so we stayed on the sand. There where so many and all sorts of shells. I really wanted to go in the water, but I didn't want to get hurt by the triangle shells, so I just walked on the water shore line. I felt amazing to finally feel the water meet the sand for the first time in 7 years. I loved it. After a few second of standing on the sand, I heard shrieks that came from M&M. I ran to see what she was holding, and it was a hermit crab the size of my thumb-nail that was inside a sea shell. It was so tiny. Right after finding it we started to find more and more and more hermit crabs that we had never noticed til now. It was very funny to see all the little hermit crabs crawling around in the sand. The tiniest one we found was the size of my pinky-nail, and the biggest one we found was at least 2 inches wide. It was huge! We all made a big hermit crab playground in the sand. Monster help as well. Each time we found a crab, we would put it in the playground. Monster started to love watching all the little hermit crabs crawl around in the sand rings we built for them.

Me and Little A had to keep making more and more rings to keep the hermit crabs from crawling out of the playground. M&M was an expert at finding the hermit crabs. After getting tired of watching the hermit crabs, I went on a shell scavenger hunt. I scanned the sand for any really cool shells. It wasn't that hard to find that many really cool shells. The only really annoying thing was that the hermit crabs always claimed the triangle shells. Triangle shells are really pretty and very designed shells, and the crabs always claimed them before we could. M&M was really, Really,  REALLY lucky to find one that wasn't claimed.

 Monster hated the water, but hated to stand on the sand, so he just sat cried for mom to hold him.

The beach also had a section that we could snorkel in. Good thing we brought our snorkel stuff because that was exactly what we did!

Me, M&M, and dad all went for a little snorkel time. I was very scared that there where sharks in the water so I stayed as close to dad as possible without annoying him.

The snorkel area was only over a section of shells and dead coral so there wasn't that many cool things to see, but it was still pretty cool to see the bottom of the ocean. Me and M&M went snorkeling by ourselves once with Brother Schwartz and we went all the way to the balls that marked the end of the snorkeling area it was so cool. It was really nice to be on, in and be a part of a beach for the first time in 7 years.

While we went snorkeling, Little A and Monster played with Daphne and Rhett.  The girls loved playing in the sand!  Monster still hated the sand, so he cried when mom tried to get him to play in the sand with Rhett.

Mom also loved having Corianne with her!  We are so glad we had friends with us in Okinawa!

Okinawa: Mermaid's Grotto

One of the places that was top on my list to visit was called Apogama, but it is commonly referred to as Mermaid's Grotto.  I wanted to go snorkeling here, because a lot of people told me the snorkeling is amazing.  We had our snorkel gear in the car and was ready to try it out.

When we got to Mermaid's Grotto, there was a gigantic sign saying US Forces and Japanese Forces restrict any water activities in the area.  If it was just Kevin and I, I probably would have brought the snorkel gear anyways and tried it out, but since we had the kids, we didn't even bring it out of the car. To get to the Grotto, you first walk down this tunnel of trees!  We couldn't see the ocean, but we knew we were close because there were so many hermit crabs scuttling around.  

Once we got out of the tree tunnel, we were greeted by some gorgeously huge rock formations and caves.

We ended up coming at low tide, so the cave was open for exploring!  There were pockets in the cave that had small crystal clear pools.  There were brightly colored fish swimming around.  We also saw huge crabs and a big slimy looking sea slug.

We all explored around the big cave!  It was so neat to see how the fish would get caught in the little tide pools when it was low tide.

We loved searching for different fish and sea creatures!  If someone found something, they would call out and we would all gather around and "ohhhh" and "ahhhh".

After we saw all the crevices in the cave, we went out to the ocean's edge.  There were so many sea creatures all over the rocky ground.  We saw starfish, anemone and crabs.  There were many things we saw that we didn't know what they were called.  This would be a neat place to go when it is low tide and high tide!  I can see why people would like snorkeling here during high tide!  We saw so much at low tide, I can just imagine how much more there would be to see when covered by water.

By this point, Little Monster wasn't being a monster, but a scary cat.  All the crabs scurrying at his feet made made him nervous, so he cried and asked to be held.  Even with him in my arms, he was gripping so very tight.  Since we got our fill of sea creatures, especially Monster, we headed back up the tree tunnel to the car.