The hunt for a cherry blossom tree

Location: Kadena, Okinawa, Japan

Holy crap on a cracker (famously quoting the chick on the Big Bang Theory which I watched 7 episodes of in the past 12 hours - funny-ish show... more so when it's your only option for English television... I digress).

I'm in Asia!

And honestly, I'm not NEARLY as overwhelmed as I thought it was going to be.

I got to the airport early; graciously dropped off by Lauren on her way to work (thank you again, love! You're amazing!) I had some breakfast and waited for the counter to open. I ran into the guys from Atreyu who were on my flight and chatted for a bit while we waited. The flight was really quite lovely. Within minutes of taking off, the stewardess' were coming by with my free Kirin. And before I had time to finish it, they were around to offer a second - which I did not turn down. Our lunch was quick behind. For the appetizer, smoked salmon, potato salad, turkey pastrami salad. For the main course grilled eel, rice, Japanese noodles and a roll. Then we got ice cream and green tea... more beer... and that's when I popped a couple Tylenol PMs as well. I started dozing off about half way through the Informant (meh) and then woke up right before... well... dinner! Dinner, wasn't so amazing (some strange mushroom and tofu concoction - i think) so I won't describe, but it was still food, for free. Which rocks.

The second flight was quick and relatively painless. It was me and a whole plane full of marines reporting for duty (which made for an interesting ride, to say the least). Mandy, my cousin, was waiting for me outside the airport when I arrived and I was so excited to see her. I was pretty exhausted, so we came straight home and went to bed (about midnight, it worked out well) and rested up for a big day of sight seeing today.

We started early, and Mandy and I took little Katie to search for some cherry blossom trees. We drove up to Nago where the annual cherry blossom festival is held (next week) and found one (single) tree that was blooming. Only one. So I screamed and made Mandy pull over and took as many pictures as possible. It was a tiny tree.

We drove all around the island plotting out our plans for tomorrow - of which there are many - and we made a stop at the Pineapple theme park where we rode a pineapple golf cart ride through the pineapple grove and then spent a half hour tasting pineapples in every form possible (liquor, wine, dried, fresh, jelly, chocolate and cake). We also took a stop at the blown glass factory and watched people take their turn at glass blowing and looked at a bunch of trinkets (including the cutest penny sized glass panda that I almost bought but realized I have absolutely no reason, nor any place to put it).

Waiting around now, Alan is home from work and we're about to put Katie down. We have a babysitter tonight so we have big plans! Word on the street is Yoshi (the man who owns the sushi place we're going to) serves blowfish and there's something about lips tingling and poisonous fish that makes me a bit excited.

XOXO

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