St Patrick's Day was pretty cool this year on Okinawa. Being in Japan you wouldn't think there's much of a celebration, but with so many Americans running around and some random Irish pubs it's not too bad. The luck of the Irish was with us that night. My cousin Garth, first photo, had just moved to Okinawa in January but I hadn't caught up with him yet. Not 15 minutes after I was thinking of calling him we bumped into him and his friends at the bar Fujiyma's by the Irish pub Patty Mac's. I guess it helps that we're all part Irish!



We had a great time catching up and drinking fresh Guiness from the tap and many rounds of car bombs.....as you can see from the photos!



Garth is happy to be settled on the island but unfortunately broke up with his girlfriend before moving out of the states. Jordan(double fistin') and I took turns trying to hook him up with random girls at the bar. On Gate 2 street you can hit chicken yaki-tori stands, kind of like hot dog stands in the US. It's basically a chicken shishkabob. In the next photo you can see us throwin' down at about 2am on some yaki-tori.


Well one good helping of yaki-tori always deserves another so we hit another stand on the way to our cars/taxi, but it turned out to be more like yuckey tori. The meat tasted like chicken skin, which it probably was or maybe liver among other things! Amanda being a little tipsy explained in no uncertain terms, and many adjectives I will not repeat that it was nasty...right in front of the guy cooking it. I had to spit out some myself. I guess you can't expect too much from street vendors. So that's the moral of the story today. Tune in for more pearl's of wisdom next time. Yes we're being sarcastic in case you were wondering.

This past Sunday was a busy day. Amanda and I really wanted to sleep in but I climbed out of bed around 8am. The fact that Sunday is my long run day, 11 miles, for my marathon training made it even harder to get out of bed. The good thing was that the weather was awesome. Clear blue sky and probably around 75 degrees
with a slight breeze is about all you can ask for. Lucky for me I live right next to the Okinawa Prefectural Comprehensive park. It's about 10 acres with tennis courts, a stadium track, baseball fields, etc. The 5 kilometer running track goes right past the beach on the east side of the island by port Awase. Amanda kept up with me for the first 45 minutes and then I was on my own for the next 8 miles or so. 11 miles sounds like a lot but my pace was maybe a 9 minute mile so not much more than a jog. In fact a speed walker paced me like I wasn't even moving. The locals are all bundled up in jumpsuits and hats, which seem way to warm for me but it is their winter time.
After frittata for lunch we headed off to find the Southeast Botanical Gardens. They're about 15 minutes from where Amanda and I live, but we managed to get lost and drove for about an hour. We ended up on some back roads behind Camp Shields and stumbled onto a flea market. You know that you're near a base on Kadena when you spot 8 foot high fences with barded wire along the top. The flea marketeers had what looked like discarded uniforms hanging on the fences for sale. Most of them still had the nametags on them. Eventually we found the garden and paid 1000 yen admission and then 300 yen to ride a tram that cruised around one half of the park. The current rate is around 100 yen per dollar. It's kind of a tourist trap but they do have some impressive hibiscus flowers growing everywhere, as you can see from my photos.
It was already 4pm and we had to get to 5pm mass so we had to leave the gardens without seeing the non-tram side. After mass we had a quick bite at an on base sandwich shop and hit the theater to see the movie Munich. Not a bad movie but very depressing. I knew about the hi-jacking of the Munich olympics but I didn't realize so much retaliation had gone on afterwards. Not much has changed in 30 years.