So before I got the Green Apple I decided I would have Erik drop me off at the Bx (like the military's Walmart) and I'd get some things for the house and walk home. The fact that we live so close to base can be a little deceiving because yes it's a very short distance to the gate, but then getting anywhere on base takes some more time. But hey, I've got nothing else to do but walk 3 miles in the middle of the day with bags full of household goods, right? Actually, yeah, that's about right. Although the walk was long, I did get to see something that I had noticed before driving by and wanted to look more closely. On base there are areas that are preserved b/c they are parts of Okinawan history. This is a large tomb that is supposed to represent the shape of a woman's womb. Each family has a tomb and the bigger the tomb the wealthier the family. This past weekend (April 11-13), my uncle Tim informed us, was a holiday in which people visit their family's tomb and pay respects to their ancestors. We noticed that the traffic skyrocketed and we could see fireworks from the roof of our house.

Kristen and I have done some exploring of our own. She and I went on a Japanese grocery store tour. Ayano, our guide, walked us through the store and we could ask questions about anything we saw. We found that the Japanese use sweet potato a lot. They have sweet potato chips (purple bag in pic), sweet potato pie (not in pic, but delicious), sweet potato candies, sweet potato ice cream (and green tea ice cream!), and more. Kristen and I bought probably more than anyone else in the tour because we would see something, Ayano would explain what it was, and we'd want to try it. We bought ingredients to make our own miso soup at home (and an instant miso soup in case we messed it up), sweet potato chips, green tea, jasmine tea, kumquats, mini cokes, vegetable cereal in a bag, soy bread, okinawan lime candy, pancakes with beans, and a goya salad with mystery meat (not pictured b/c we were so disgusted that we threw it out- after we spit it out). More on goya later.

This is the vegetable cereal we bought. It has pieces of dried veggies in it along with something like granola, but not as crunchy. It was really good! Erik and Giff, Kristen's husband, refused to try it.