Chris and I are off on a week’s R&R in Okinawa, the Hawaii of Japan.  Okinawa is a two hour flight south from Iwakuni.  We went Space Available on the Patriot Express.  This is a plane that just flies Seattle-Tokyo-Iwakuni-Okinawa-Iwakuni-Tokyo-Seattle.  So we hopped on in Iwakuni, hopped off in Okinawa, and assuming there will be “space available” we’ll hop back on in Okinawa next Saturday and hop off in Iwakuni.

Okinawa is about 45 miles long and about 5 miles wide.  Here’s a glimpse at its narrowest.

And some small islands off shore.

We flew in to Kadena Air Force Base and are staying next door at the Westpac Lodge on the Marine Corp Base Camp Foster.  Here’s the view from our room.

This week is expected to be mostly cloudy but yesterday was beautiful so we drove north a couple hours to the famous Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium.  We started the day with breakfast at the Rose Garden Cafe off base, a very American style breakfast spot packed with Japanese folks.  Highway 58 took us north along the west coast of Okinawa, very beautiful views of the East China Sea

and a popular cycling route.

The Aquarium was a wonderful place to spend the day.

The whale sharks were impressive

as was this character

and this amazingly huge lobster.

Here’s a view of the aquarium from the other side.  Very impressive structure.

As we moved on to outdoor exhibits we just happened to be just in time for the dolphin show.  Check out the view.

The whole show reminded me of the Sea World dolphin shows of the ’60’s.

And the finale!

And when that was over we were just in time for another dolphin show.  This one we think was about how they train the dolphins.

And then, you guessed it, another dolphin show.  The best part was when the MC had this little boy from the audience stand on a box and give hand signals to the dolphins for them to do tricks.  He took this responsibility very seriously.

An all around great day!