Okinawa Adventures

As most of you know, Ben has been on a deployment to Japan since the beginning of March. He has about two weeks left (yay!). He sent us a few pictures and an excerpt from his journal, so I thought I'd share.


"April 11, 2009 Saturday

Today was a fun day for sure. This morning I called a friend from church to see if he had some allen wrenches because I needed to tighten the neck on a bike that was given to me to get around. Anyway, he wound up inviting me to go along with his family today to Okinawa World, or something like that. It was really cool!

There was a huge naturally formed series of caves with all sorts of stalagmites and stalactites. It was formed over time by water running through the ground and the caves follow the water. It was a lot like the Timpanogos Caves we went to last summer in Utah, but way better. The caves system was so long, the rooms were all very large, and it was crazy how they were connected. In Utah they had to manually connect the caves, but here they were all basically connected and there were just a few spots where they had to break off some stalactites in order to allow people through.

After the caves we checked out the little Okinawan village that was set up there, that was neat with all the shops mixed in. They also had a ceramics shop where they were making pottery. Right next to that was a little glass factory. It was set up so that you could be just a few feet from the guys firing and blowing the glass, it was awesome! I would really love to be able to do that, I think that would be so neat. I was going to get something for my family but all the things I liked were a little expensive.

After that they had a traditional drum performance where the people were all dressed up in their garb and had their big drums on their hips. They all danced around banging their drums and yelling and all that, it was a great performance. After the Okinawa World park we went to a beach and had lunch and sat in the water. It was beautiful and the weather was perfect for it today. I had a really nice time, but man am I tired after walking around and being in the breeze and sun all day. "

Ben also went to a place called "Forest Adventure" a few weeks ago. It's a park with a system of zip-lines that move through the forest. You can see from the pictures how much fun he had!

I'm glad he has been able to get out and do some fun things. I know most of his weekends are spent alone (mostly because he doesn't drink or party with the others). We're so blessed that he automatically has friends there from going to church, it's nice of them to take care of him!

And while I'm glad he's had fun, I'm even happier that it's almost over! These deployments are torture for me. Can't wait to see him again!