Kate’s Quests

DJ and I went to visit Okinawa because he had some work to do down there. It’s the southern island of Japan and there is a bit more space there. It’s a tad bit more tropical and there are sugar plantations and palm trees everywhere. It doesn’t get as cold there in the winter, but otherwise the weather is pretty similar. We left on a C-35. It seats six passengers and there were five of us so it was perfect. We got there and our friends in Okinawa picked us up at the terminal.

When the boys had to work, my friend Angie and I went to this cultural park (Ryukyu Mura) and wandered around. It was basically a “traditional Okinawa village, dressed as one would find thousands of such villages across Ryukyu…in a time when life was simple, Japanese were visitors and Americans simply weren’t around.” With our ticket came entrance to the snake show. I had no idea what we were in for, but as we sat down in a small theater they brought out a snake and mongoose in a cage separated by glass. They both tried to get at one another and eventually the mongoose fell asleep and the snake slithered all the way up to the glass and tried to get out. Finding no luck, he eventually gave up as well. Then, after about 15 minutes of listening to a Japanese guy give a little presentation (probably would have been fascinating had I understood a single word) they brought out a water balloon and stuck it into the cage. The poisonous snake (a Habu) lunged at the balloon and broke it, soaking the poor thing with water and then we watched a very advanced 3D movie of a mongoose and snake attacking each other. It was a very convincing 3D movie, really. I especially liked the weird hissing. It reminded me of snow on the television.

As we were leaving we stumbled upon a little performance. It was quite cute and they had lots of different people up there giving little dances.