Churami Aquarium and Ocean Expo Park

We had some -lovely- friends invite us to go with them and their two cute little girls up to the Ocean Expo Park during the Christmas/New Years holiday times when we had some time off. The trip is a full-day adventure as it takes 45 minutes or so to get there, and then the park itself has several different areas to explore.

When we first arrived, we were disappointed to see that the -awesome- playground they have of tons of nets attached to poles of different heights has an age limit. Regardless, they have a wonderful little park outside the aquarium for children to goof around on. In fact, it's actually called the Kids Adventure Land.

Our first stop was the awesome dolphin and porpoise show. We saw backflips, coordinated jumps with 6 dolphins, comedy acts, heard a 'song', and much more. It was really a fantastic show. It was SO fantastic, in fact, that it didn't matter even a little bit that it was entirely in Japanese :) I managed to get one spectacular shot, which was a complete fluke (or should I say... providential). Anyhow, here it is:

After the dolphin show, we went and looked at the sea turtles and sea cows (aka, manatees). As we were looking at the many sea turtles, we decided that the bigger ones must be the males, and the more dainty-looking ones must be the females. See the difference?

Wrong.

Completely wrong.

Hilariously wrong.

Try different species.

Seriously. An engineer and a doctor were both totally agreeing upon the fact that these MUST just be the differences between GENDER. Don't let education fool you - you can still make silly assumptions.

So, here's what's really cool: the dolphin show, the kid's adventure park, the sea turtles, the manatees, and much more are all outside of the actual 'pay to enter' area. So you can go explore Okinawan traditional culture, play in the playground, take pictures in gigantic sea creatures constructed from flowers (see baby octopus below), watch a dolphin show, debate which sea turtles are male and which are female, and enjoy the manatees without having to pay a nickel. Pretty awesome!

Once we got inside, we purchased season passes (if you go twice in a year, they pay for themselves, so it's totally worth it), then stopped by the little 'see it and touch it' tide pool. They had starfish and sea cucumbers that you could pick up and play with. I still think the ones you see on the Oregon coast are cooler, but hey.

Then, we walked around the corner and the real action began.

They had tons and tons of tanks filled with every kind of coral reef and fish. Then they had smaller tanks with only two or three types of creatures in each. One of the most informative areas was where they showed the most poisonous creatures native to Okinawa, described why they are dangerous, and then told you how to minimize injury when encountering these specific creatures. Rock fish are particularly frightening to me because legit look like rocks, but you could die if you step on one of them by accident. Awesome.

The aquarium culminates in a GIGANTIC tank with enormous manta-rays and whale sharks, among other sea creatures. Seriously, the rays were probably 8' in diameter and the whale sharks were probably over 15' long. You walk around the tank, which has glass on all sides, slowly going down a ramp, ending at the cafeteria (conveniently). On one side of the tank, you can walk under the tank so you can look up at the beautiful manta-rays and whale sharks, and fish from below.

We ate a 'snack' at the aquarium (I got taco rice, which proved to be a legitimate meal, unlike the hotdog that Mr. A ordered), then headed out to see what else Ocean Expo Park had to offer.

We headed to the opposite side of the park to visit the botanical gardens. These gardens were absolutely beautiful. For anyone who loves orchids, they had an entire greenhouse (or two) filled with all different types of orchids that were gorgeous. They were also setting up for a hibiscus flower show while we were there.

They also had a really cool greenhouse that had all sorts of different plants that are used for various things. They had a coffee tree, a vanilla plant, a mango tree, a rubber tree, and so on.

At the center of the garden they have this beautiful tower which you can climb (or take the elevator) up to the top to get a beautiful view of the whole garden and out to the ocean. Here's the tower itself and the view from it:

After touring around the botanical gardens for a while, we took another path back to the car, passing by a cultural section of the park. In this section, they have models of Okinawan homes to show you how Okinawans have traditionally lived over the years. We got to climb up into one 'home' that was up on 10' stilts! Most of them were completely made of thatching, with very little hard wood. Apparently, they were so good at thatching that rain wouldn't come through at all, despite the Okinawan typhoons that are so common here. Pretty amazing!

We hope to visit again soon!

Yara Castle Ruins and Sushi-Go-Round: Another adventure in Oki

Well, it's been a while! Things have kept up pace through the holidays and into the new year. We've managed to keep on exploring, so hopefully I'll get to post some of the excitement on the blog.

We were able to use one of Mr. A's days off to go exploring! Mr. A planned a wonderful outing to the Yara Castle Ruins. It's a lesser-known 'cas

tle', but a wonderful park with beautiful scenery, challenging and easy trails, and lots of pretty water in the form of ponds, lakes, steams and (small) rivers. It's a great little getaway that's only about 20 minutes from our house. Mr. A has

a thought to possibly use it as a place to run when he's got a little extra time.

Most of the 'castle' stones are right at the beginning. You hike up

some stone stairs next to a wall to enter into the park. Inside they've made a fun little playground with nifty concrete slides. Then you get to the really pretty part of the park. It has tons of winding trails in lush forest.

There were a number of shrines around the ruins, some of which were clearly still visited regularly. We found this one particularly beautiful, and as you can see, someone still comes by occasionally to pay tribute to those housed inside the shrine.

Here are another couple views of the scenery. One is from the top of a large, concrete structure in the middle of an open area. The other is of the main river which runs at the base of the park in an area where the river widens a little.

Once we had finished exploring, we were quite hungry for lunch. However, we wanted to head NE to go to Yellowbox, which is a furniture store where they sell Ashley furniture. They sell the same furniture that they sell on base, but for better prices. We're hoping to get our furniture in soon! We are SO excited to sleep on a bed that isn't base furniture!

However, before we could go to the furniture store, we HAD to stop for lunch, as we were completely famished. A day at the ruins will do that to ya. So we stopped at a McDonalds to ask where we could find a sushi restaurant close by. They sent us to an a.maz.ing sushi-go-round. "What is a sushi-go-round?" you may ask. Ah, the glories of the sushi-go-round. It is a lovely restaurant where they have a conveyer belt filled with little plates

of sushi which traverses the entire restaurant. See a piece you like? Just pick it up off the conveyer belt and it's yours!

However, this particular sushi-go-round was even more awesome. It had this fantastic little screen where you could order exactly what you wanted. They would make your sushi in the back, and it would come out on a little track just a

bove the conveyer belt. Four little plates could come out at once, led by an adorable rubber ducky. Yes, that's right folks, a rubber ducky.

Each plate has a specific design which tells you how much the sushi cost. We got a little confused by the ordering process at first and right at the end. Mr. A ended up ordering four of the same type of sushi, two with and two without wasabi. Oops. It's a good thing they were delicious! The one below was 'with'. Um, can you say adorable little warning flag?

Well, that concludes the most adventurous part of the day :) Hope you enjoyed!