If its Tuesday, this must be....

If its Tuesday, this must be Okinawa.

A little Ann Arbor reunion. Yuri Kochi and two other sisters one of whom also lived in Michigan flew down from their homes around Nagoya to meet us for the day.
A local friend of Yuri's was the van driver. A van that they rented on our behalf, by the way.
Five Japanese sisters all with their cameras and me. ( for the purposes of this discussion Doris is a Japanese sister.). Much frivolity and jocularity ensued. There were an incalculable number permutations of who was taking pictures of whom.
They had arranged a trip to a quite large ocean marine park all the way at the other end of this island. The aquariums had lots of fish in them, all kinds of fish and other sea type creatures, many, many fish.
Fish seem to be a big deal around here.
As entertaining as watching fish swim around in circles was, watching the watchers of the fish was better. Swarms, or should i say schools, of camera wielding hipster Japanese youth, apparently college kids, completely decked out in hipster fashions (Abercombray and Flitch any one?) paraded around the vast grounds concentrating fully on taking pictures of each other in every possible combination.

Saw a lot of highway work very efficiently presided over by earnest workers, working with great Japanese earnestness. The guys holding the yellow warning flags tended to their mission with the concentration of a surgeon.

Got back to Naha in time to wander about their version of open markets. Its all kinda starting to look pretty much alike.

In honor of our time at the aquarium, i had a heapin helping of Sashimi, in their somewhat more sanitary version of a local food court.

Interestingly enough, despite having a gigantic American military presence all over the island, with all the typically kitschy trappings of a military town, like Beaufort SC, Fort Bragg NC, there wasn't a Starbucks in sight. What to make of this?

Got back to the ship with just enough time to take another 4726 pictures of each other.

It was a very nice day with amusing people.

Off to last stop Shanghai. I have high hopes that this will be the best stop, except for Hong Kong perhaps. Just not having to chase back to the ship will be a welcome change.
Unfortunately since the aparatchniks who run China have a general fear of openness and specific animosity towards google, there will likely be little blogging going on till we get to Tokyo on Sunday.