Gina arrived Monday night after a two day delay from snow in Seattle (on March 28th????). She was tired from the 26 hour day, but wide awake due to the time zone difference. I had a week of school left before spring break so she had time to adjust to the new time zone. I had a couple of concerts as well. On Saturday, we got to be tourists. I took her to Himahiga Island. It takes two bridges to get there and has two small, rural villages on it…not much else except the new government built beach (they truckin the sand…)

 

Those mushroom looking things are rocks the size of houses out in the bay. Pretty amazing. Later, we visited a castle ruin:

 

This is Katsuren Castle ruins. It’s built at the top of a ridge and you have to hike up to it. There was a tour guide explaining everything to another couple; but we didn’t catch much since it was all being explained in Japanese.

 

Next, we went to a huge japanese shopping mall and bought some fresh salmon, sushi, and fruit there. They like Spam here. Check out the Spam aisle (click to enlarge):

 I had no idea how many spam-like canned meats existed in the world. Note that none of these are japanese.

 

Check out the word on the wall above the "Dairy" section in the store. They mix up their L’s and R’s a lot here…

 Uh….that’s ‘Dairy’….

 

Today, we went to the Southeast Botanical Gardens. It is very tourist oriented, but done well nonetheless. Here are some pics:

 

The hanging blue flowers were amazing; I’ve never seen color like that in a flower before. Equally amazing, but for different reasons, was the frenzy of feeding the carp in the pond. They went nuts when they saw the little blue box of fish food in your hand.

 

Tonight, we’re off to Torii Beach to be beach bums. I’ll bring my kite, the wind’s blowing and it’s 79 degrees. Beautiful day to get wet.

 

Till next time…