Nikko and Okinawa!

And no pictures. hahaha

I can`t upload any pictures until Wednesday but I`m taking a break from writing my paper so...yeah.

First- Nikko.

Last Last weekend Katie and I went to Nikko and stayed with the very nice Tanya who showed us around. Saturday we went to an awesome pottery town with tons of big badger statues and- what else? Awesome pottery. After that, we visited a fabric store where I was finally able to start buying fabric for my mom. Sunday we went to the to...something shrine where the three wise monkeys and the sleeping cat are. We also saw a lake (I forgot the name) on a mountain which was VERY beautiful. There were were able to wander through a...I believe Italian or french diplomat home which had a nice view of said lake. After that we went to a waterfall which was AWESOME. I adjusted the colors and set it as my desktop on my laptop, and when I turned my laptop on the other day I thought `wow, I took that picture, I was there.` So look forward to when I upload that.

2 days after we got back from the Nikko trip, we went to Okinawa! It was about a 2 and a half hour plane ride from Tokyo (and about a 1 and a half hour bus ride to get to the airport...) and when we walked through the airport I could just feel the humidity.

I`ll get the days mixed up so things we did: walked around Shuri Castle, learned to play a song on Japanese traditional guitar, did glass blowing (we made cups), watched an Okinawan drum performance, and then learned a dance, walked through a cave (which wasn`t as cool as the caves in Delaware Ohio), went to one of the world`s largest aquariums, saw a dolphin show, went to a `tropical forest` which was more like a conservatory, went to the WW2 peace memorial museum and DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH TIME AT ALL. Everyone wished we had more time there, we were like halfway through the exhibit and realized we needed to be on the bus in 5 minutes. We went shopping, and saw very old native Okinawa houses (from the days of the hut).

And ate a lot of ice cream.