Memorial Day/Okinawa World

Memorial day morning Rich called me while he was on his run and said, “Get the kids ready! We are going to the parade that starts in an hour!” We rushed and got ready and headed to the parade. It was our first military parade and it did not disappoint! The cool thing about Okinawa is that there are bases of every branch here so there were many men and women in different uniforms representing their branch.

She doesn’t realize how big she is.

Here they come!

The service members didn’t throw out candy, instead they came by and handed them right to the kids.

Lots of cool military vehicles that Rich made sure I got a picture of

Aidan was so excited about the boy scouts.

This thing was huge! I couldn’t get the whole thing in the frame.

Rich’s favorite, the motorcycle guys.

My little patriot!

So much candy.

After the parade we went straight to Café Late for breakfast and that is where Rich mentioned going to Okinawa World. I guess this was going to be an all day thing! So, after breakfast we went to Okinawa World!

It was a really cool place and I so wish I had been feeling better that day but I had the most horrible migraine. I did my best to suck it up but I definitely look forward to going back another time when I can really enjoy it. Rich and the kids had a great time though!

Eva got a close look at a Habu snake which is a very dangerous and poisonous snake that inhabits Okinawa. Lucky us! In fact, the trail we have made a tradition of walking on on Sunday’s is called the Habu Trail. Hmmmm…

Another something we noticed pretty shortly after arriving on island is that when you think you saw a bird, it was probably a bat, especially at night. Sometimes they are HUGE! These little guys were super cute and sleepy though.

This one woke up and was watching us watch him.

We also hit up the cave. This cave was sooooo big! They took our picture before we entered.

There were so many beautiful sections in there to take pictures of but by that point my head was pounding so I didn’t get many at all.

We finished our cave tour and continued on thinking we had almost seen everything Okinawa World had to offer. We were so wrong. The gardens, where we saw many of the things that grow in Okinawa like mandarin oranges, pineapples, star fruit, bananas…

My shisa kids.

This place just kept getting better and better! We got to the Ryukyu glass section which Okinawa is really well known for. You can pay to make your own cup! We got there just in time to see this lady make hers.

Then, we got to every parents worst nightmare…the Ryukyu glass store.

We threatened our kids upon entering and by some small miracle, not a single thing was broken. They had some really cute stuff but Ryukyu glass is expensive.

Okinawa World reminded us so much of Silver Dollar City…the Japanese version

We continued on and came to the Shisa museum. If there is anything that Okinawa has no shortage of is Shisa in many different designs.

Stuffed animal shisa, paper shisa, you name it they had it.

There were so many things going on and I feel like we just scratched the surface of what Okinawa World has to offer. We will definitely be back.