Egg-stravaganza 2008

Here are some Eggcellent pictures I've collected of Egg-themed things in the past year.

I was originally very eggcited to find this magazine, Tamago Club. I thought, finally! Sign me up.



But alas, it was only full of babies and baby tips for new mothers. Eggs are often associated with kids and mothering. Yuck-o!

But that's okay, because Eggs can be for big kids too. Like this bar or "izakaya,"



Or this smoke-filled pachinko (gambling) parlor.



Eggs can also be found representing adult responsibility and noble civic duty, like on this trash can in Kyoto.



Or on a more fun note as home essentials:

Dish Towels,


Coffee Tables,


And a multi-egg boiler shaped like a giant egg!


But one of my all time favorites had to be this plant, a gift, that bloomed from an egg.


This was at my desk at work. Unfortunately, this plant went under aggressive attack from a number of ants leading to our office's "No Plant" policy.

Have an eggcellent New Year!!!

Merry X-MOS!

Well, the holidays have come and gone, but I wanted to share with you a tradition here in Okinawa for holidays and I hear, sometimes just any ol' celebration.


Yes, the Colonel is alive and well in Okinawa. They call it 'Kentucki' and a modest dinner for one in the U.S. can serve an entire family and extended family here.

Local Japanese competitors have stepped up to the plate with their own version.


I have to say it is a better version in my opinion. Fresh fast-food. Imagine if Whole Foods or Trader Joe's started a fast food chain.

Here's the Mos Burger Christmas Special:


It's the "MOS Chicken Pack".

And they decorated it for the season.


If you could see this up close, you'd also note there's glitter on the chicken.

And as a Christmas miracle I saw this.



It's like a Mos Burger Chicken Nugget in the sky.

God bless us everyone.

Everyburger!

This is ebiri baga!  A delicious tiny (about the size of a my big toe) hamburger shaped snack.

Let's see what's inside, shall we?

Look at these delicious little burgers! The meat is chocolate and the buns are cookies. Chocolate meat!!

With real sesame seeds on top!! Now I just have to find the every-fries.

Botanical Gardens!

We took a trip to the Botanical Gardens.  Here's some of the cool stuff we saw featuring technical language for those botanists out there.

Here's a little movie so you can experience almost first-hand!

As we walked it we were given this reminder.

No feet.  I think this means bare feet, but that's really just speculation.

They also had this really pretty pond with a little yellow boat floating in it.

Okinawa also has cactus.

It's like I never left Texas! I bet mom can't wait to get her hands on this one.

And these super-cool Space Orchid plant that probably came from NASA.

And this Pink Fuzzy plant. 


And this is  a surfing cow.  With pants.

I really liked this Little Orange Tubule Plant too.

To sweeten the deal you can feed their carp!

Here's a video of the fish.

For a better video see Paul's blog on this:

http://okinawa-shi.blogspot.com/2008/03/southeast-botanical-gardens.html

Also, this park wouldn't be complete without Okinawa's official flower, The Okinawan Flower.

We even have hibiscus in front of our apartment!

There are a ton of different colors/hues of hibiscus too.

This is a tree trunk with crazy circle on it.  I think it's from where the branches fell off.

They also had a great giftshop featuring a very popular Okinawan food.

I'm not kidding.  It's in everything from stir-fry to rice balls.  They sky is the limit, really. I think this is a result of the U.S. military presence here.  Okinawans inherited U.S. war time food supplies.

Here's Paul and Bryan getting ready to enter the enchanted forest.

We were sad to leave.

I think this sign means don't drop your lunch in the pond. It'll be sad.

America Village

There's this place here called Chatan. In Chatan there's a ton of rich military living in apartments along the ocean.  Lucky for us that means we can always get some version of good American fare.  This time we found Jet City Burgers.

It's really cool there.  It's a little beach hut right along the ocean that sells these burgers..

with soup. Chicken noodle soup!

They also have all kinds of cool music and magazines there.  And American stuff.  Last time I was there they had empty boxes of Kelloggs Frosted Flakes and I think Cap'n Crunch (pix not included, sorry).

They even have these burger replicas on their dumpster.

Behind the dumpster is this beach where we walk off the avocado burger and soup.

After dinner you can head over to America Village when you're really feeling homesick.  Just to get a taste of home.

It's like they've been to San Angelo.  

It does represent some parts of American culture and it definitely gets a lot of business. We haven't ridden the ferris wheel yet, but maybe soon.

And I almost forgot!  There's also Baskin Robbins and all it's 31 Flavors here!  

That's nas-shi-tou-yu!

Tea Time!

Wow, it's been awhile so I have an extreme back-log of photos.  I'll try to keep the text short on these and the pix may be a bit out of order.

This is a little tea shop we found near our house.  We can walk there, but we usually bike.

I was especially hungry that day so we each ordered a "Tea Set"

It was delicious and all very delicate and tiny. Paul felt kinda funny there.

He also pointed out to me, "Hey, I'm the only dude here."

Ikei Island

This is the day we went to Ikei Island.  We actually rode there on our bikes one heroic day.  It is ~50-60km away from our house, I think.  We took a leisurely bike ride there and then rode all the way home in the rain.  When we got about 3km from our house, Paul ran over a nail so we walked the rest of the way home.  It was a tough day, but here I just show nice friendly pictures of when we drove in a car there.

These are the Katsuren Ruins.  These ruins hold a story of betrayal and a tragic loyalty.  Basically, the guy at Katsuren was planning to attack Naha.  A loyal subject in Nakagusuku learned about this plan and began to build an army to protect Naha.  The dirty dude in Katsuren found out about loyal subject-guy and he did something bad.  He told the peeps in Naha that the loyal subject guy was actually planning the attack!!  Then you know what happened?  The folks in Naha attacked the loyal guy's army. THEN loyal guy killed himself.  Stinky Katsuren. (Obviously, I'm not very good with history or storytelling).

Anyway, it was cool. Here are some views.

Then we left the ruins and headed down the road to Ikei Island.  We had to stop when we saw this.

This guy was combing his bull next to the road and across the street from the ocean.

The bull's name is Ume (which means ocean).  I also introduced this bull in an earlier blog.

After meeting Ume, we headed over to Ikei island.  To get there, you cross this cool bridge.

And here are some views from the bridge.

And here's what I saw when I looked down over the bridge.

Then we finally made it to this little pier thing.

Neslted in the sides of this mushroom shaped rock there were two statues.

Some people even brought offerings of money, water, and this tennis ball.

Here's a video so you can feel like you were there too.

Okay, I'm starting to make a dent in all these posts I have left to do.  Stay tuned.