As per usual, Jules and I have been quite busy lately, except for when we?re not, and when we laze around in the projector room watching TV shows on the computer.  About a week ago it started getting consistently sunny out, so we slathered on the sunscreen and went to the beach grabbing our new friend Beverly on the way.  Julie took us out to Moon Beach, a great little beach up the road which was funky because the roped off swimming area got no deeper than ...

Over these last couple of weeks that I haven’t written, Julie and I have been living it up on this little island. Julie has continued being my wonderful tour guide and we have experienced more of Okinawa than anyone else we know here. A week or so ago Julie took me to Shuri Castle down in Naha. It is surprising that on an island as small as Okinawa there are so many castle ruins. I believe there are around 15 of them actually and we’ve already be...

Julie and I have made some progress on our explorations of Okinawa. Last week she invited 2 Japanese friends from her English classes to come with us as we traversed the island in search of Sefa Utaki and the Gyokusendo caves. Not only were the Japanese girls (Yuko and Haruna) fun to hang out with, but they were great help in the map reading department.  The first stop was Sefa Utaki, a sacred, forested area all green and dripping where priestesses used to p...

It is SO NICE to have somewhere to call home for a little while. I arrived in Okinawa, Japan two weeks ago and Julie has made me very at home here, which is good since I'll probably be here for about 2 more months before heading up to China. The first night here Julie was busy teaching a couple of language classes, so her friend Marc, a very professional military guy, picked me up at the airport and drove me to her apartment half an hour north of Naha. We imm...