chillin' with the natives

Kristen's parents hosted a japanese exchange student who happened to be from Okinawa. Through the years, the two families became close; the Okinawan family sent their second daughter to live with them in the states and the parents also visited the U.S. and Kristen's family periodically. You can imagine how happy they were to hear that now Kristen is living in Okinawa and they can return the favor of hosting her in their home country. Erik and I have had the pleasure of meeting them too. The father's name is Hiroshi, the mother is Yoneko, and their daughter is Chiaki. Their last name is Arakaki. They live in Naha and own two pet stores (that I know of) on the island.

One day, Kristen and Giff invited Erik and me and the Arakakis to lunch at their house and afterwards we walked to the Sunabe Sea Wall. Here's our group sitting on the wall with our backs to the ocean. There is quite a language barrier with them, but Chiaki knows quite a bit of english and the Hiroshi knows a fair amount, so we can still have meaningful conversations with limited misunderstanding! They were telling us about typhoons here and how all the americans freak out and shut everything down, but the okinawans just carry on with every day life as if nothing dangerous is happening. That reminded me of when we were in Del Rio, TX and it snowed for the first time in about 7 years or so and the entire town closed and school was canceled. There wasn't even an INCH on the ground!! Erik and I went out for a drive and did some donuts. :) In one case the locals are fearless, and in the other the visitors are the fearless ones.

That's right. Erik and I were fearless.

This is the northern end of the sea wall. The tide was out when I took this picture. There are always Okinawans sitting on the wall relaxing, eating lunch, stretching, meditating, etc. As you can see, a young man is sitting by himself looking out at the ocean.
We spotted a group of divers who appeared to be practicing rescue diving. In this picture, a couple of them are practicing CPR in the water.