Okinawa

Well, I don't have a ridiculous range of experiences here yet. It's very, very hot and humid pretty much all the time. My main experiences off-base thus far have been snorkelling, going to a teppanyaki restaurant, and doing some shopping in a "mall", where they sell some interesting things.

I don't have a car here (many servicemembers people buy them cheaply, even if they're only here for six months, like us), so I was kind of limited where I went to snorkel. However, only one of the many little bases here is actually on the beach, so myself and another officer I work with went up there a couple of weeks ago with our cheap snorkelling gear. It was fun to try, but we didn't pick the best spot, as there were no colorful reefs, etc. in the area. Maybe next time.

OK, I know this picture is ridiculous. Why the thumbs-up? Not sure--it wasn't like I was about to undergo the countdown as pilot of the space shuttle. I'll have to work on that.

Teppanyaki is what many of us call "Japanese barbecue" or "Japanese grill" in the U.S. It's style of cooking where so many people can sit around one cooking area and the chef comes out and cooks your meal for you, right in front of you, usually with quite a bit of flair. Three of us went to a place that was pretty good. The highlights for me were trying beef sashimi, raw, thin-sliced beef that you dip in some kind of delicious sauce and trying the kobe beef. Kobe beef is from one certain part of Japan, and it is extremely marbled (high fat content), which makes it very tender, as long as you don't overcook it. I agree that it was very tender, but it was just way, way too rich (and expensive) for me to try for a very, very long time.

Beef sashimi:

Kobe beef:

For those of you who are squeamish about the raw beef (sashimi), it could have been worse. Some of my friends went to a sushi place, where one guy ended up with thinly-sliced horse meat. Sounds good, no?