Ocean Expo Park

Our time here is precious for a multitude of reasons.  Primarily because we are only stationed here for 3 years 2 years and 10 months.  But as many of you know my husband is a Marine.  And what do Marines do?  They deploy.  And what do they do before they deploy?  They leave for numerous trainings for months at a time.  So, because Guy will be deploying the first of the year, he is training now.  Meaning we don't have a lot of time to explore together.

Yesterday we took advantage of a beautiful (and sinfully hot) day to explore Ocean Expo Park.  It's about an hour and half north of the island.  There is so much to do there.  By the end of the day we were exhausted.  Our first stop was the aquarium.  We were told it was amazing, wonderful, a great attraction, etc.  All I have to saw is Okinawan's obviously have never been to Sea World.  Don't get me wrong, it was nice.  There was some really neat ocean life we had never seen before, but it was much smaller than we had thought. 

The Japanese women were more interested in Landen than the fish.  At one point he had 7 women surrounding him.  He was the only blond there.

There was also a dolphin show.  We didn't understand one word of the entire thing because it was in Japanese.  Here is a short clip so you can better understand:

My favorite part of the day was lunch...surprised?  We went to the Ocean view restaurant where lunch was a Japanese buffet.  We ate noodles, rice and curry, pork, tempura, sake, and many other yummy foods.  The dessert bar consisted of frozen sorbet, 4 flavors, each serving about 1/4 a cup.  This is why they are so skinny here.



The restaurant




The view




The eaters




After lunch we headed over to Old Okinawa Village.  The title is self explanatory.  We only saw two other American families the entire time we were there. 

 

An old home







Japanese tourists



Next stop was the Tropical Dream Center.  Three greenhouses with more than 2,000 orchids and a magical world with tropical and subtropical plants.

 

Right before leaving we decided to let Landen play in the fountain.  He became King of the Fountain and stood right in the middle, despite the fact that he was the youngest one there. 



Can you spot the American?




King of the Fountain