Celebrating the Children

May 5th is Children's Day here in Okinawa.  It used to be called Boys' Day, and there was a Girls' Day in early March.  However, Boys' Day is a public holiday here in Japan, and Girls' Day was not.  Therefore, the name has been changed to honor all children on May 5th.  Apparently this change happened way back in the late 1940's.

We found out about the celebration when we were driving along and saw these fish-shaped flags flying at many locations along our route.  Our guide told us that the flags are carp or koinobori.  Families fly a carp flag for every boy in the family.  Apparently there is a Chinese legend that carp swim upstream and eventually turn into dragons.  The flags symbolize strength.  The holiday is to celebrate the healthy growth and happiness of children.

School Visit Day

Today we visited Kubasaki High School to begin our school visit.  The school has about 625 students who are mostly the children of US Marines.  Kubasaki High School is part of the Okinawa District, which is a district in DoDEA.  Our accreditation team has seven members.  Jill and I are the only ones from the states.  All the other members are from other schools and districts in the Pacific.  Some are from mainland Japan, which is its own DoDEA district, one is from Guam, and one is from the Korea District.  All of those are Department of Defense districts where our US troops are stationed.

Kubaski is the oldest high school in the Pacific region.  Classes began here in the late fall of 1946, shortly after the end of World War II.  The school building currently occupied by the high school was built in 1964, and Jill and I think it's not a very nice school.  We are lucky to have the education facilities we have in Wyoming!  But even though the building needs some work, the students and staff are awesome:-)  We have enjoyed getting to meet them.

Tombs of the Dead

My grandfather was in Okinawa during World War II.  He wrote a lot of letters to my grandma, and not too long ago I read those letters with my Mom.  One of the things he wrote about was the tombs built into hillsides.  Yesterday, when we were driving to the aquarium, we saw a number of tombs along the road.  We stopped and took some pictures.

The tombs look like little houses and oftentimes face the ocean.  Here is an article about the tombs from Stars and Stripes.  Some of the tombs had flowers displayed, and some had cups with water or beer.

There are some tombs that have a round shape.  Those are called turtleback tombs.  There weren't any of those in the area where we stopped.

Later in the week we took some other pictures of tombs, so I want to add them here.

This last photo looks out toward Camp Kinser, a Marine base that lies just beyond the two towers you can see in the distance.  Camp Kinser is where the Battle of Okinawa Museum is located.

Visit to the Aquarium

It's Sunday in Okinawa, and today we drove up to the northern part of the island to visit Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. It took us about an hour or a little more to drive from Camp Foster to the aquarium.  Although it was not a very sunny day, it was nice and warm.  There are some strong winds on Okinawa, and we experienced some of those today.

Scuba diving and snorkeling are very popular here in Okinawa, and after we visited the aquarium, we can see why.  The aquarium displays some of the unique species of marine life that live in the seas surrounding the island. 

One of our favorite finds at the aquarium was this strange looking bearded cuttlefish.  To us, he looked like Davy Jones' character in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies!  Sometimes his beard/tentacles would move and curl.

When we left our bearded fish friend, we were surprised to go around the corner and see a massive tank that is about four stories tall.  In the tank were three whale sharks, the largest fish in the world, along with a number of species of rays (manta rays and sting rays) and tuna and other fish.  It was hard for us to really tell how enormous the whale sharks were until we were right underneath them.  You can walk directly under them.  Take a look.  Notice how big they are compared to the people standing.  We counted, and those sharks are about as long as 20 people!

You can really tell how big a shark is by looking at this picture of Jill and me standing in the mouth of a shark.  Check out the size of those teeth!

We also saw some manatees.  Did you  know manatees eat iceberg lettuce?  Neither did we:-)  But we happened to be there during feeding time.  You can't tell in the picture very well, but he would grip the lettuce with his flippers and hold it while he was eating.

After the manatees were the sea turtles. There were actually three different species in the tank.  Apparently it's very hard to get turtles to reproduce successfully in captivity, but they have built a nesting beach where the turtles can go to lay eggs and make nests.  There were three different sets of turtle babies in separate pools today.

After we  took a look at the dolphins, we decided to treat ourselves to some Japanese ice cream.  Jill had mango, but I tried the purple sweet potato ice cream.  Yummy!  It doesn't sound that good, does it?  But our guide told us that in Okinawa, the purple sweet potato is eaten a lot.  After our snack break, we headed to our car and back to the southern end of the island.  Here are a couple of pictures of the outside of the aquarium so you can get an idea of how big it is.

Layover in Tokyo

It's a 12-hour flight from Denver to Tokyo.  They fed us three times on the plane!  The flight was not crowded, so we had plenty of space to relax.  Some of our friends from Wyoming were on the flight because they are visiting two schools in northern Japan at Misawa.  We also met a young man who is serving in the military at Camp Kinser on Okinawa.  He was from Sheridan.  We could tell because he was wearing a "King Ropes" hat:-)

When Jill and I were flying into Tokyo, we saw this statue right outside the city.  It's a Buddha statue.  Here is some information about it:  http://stayingglobal.blogspot.jp/2011/07/ushiku-no-daibutsu-big-buddha-statue.html.

Leaving for Okinawa

I am traveling on this trip with my friend Jill Bramlet from Wheatland, Wyoming.  Have any of you ever read the Skippy John Jones books?  Remember the sister named Jilly Boo?  Well, that's what I like to call my friend:-)

We are leaving Casper to travel to Okinawa, Japan where we will be conducting an AdvancED accreditation visit for Kubasaki High School.  The high school is on an American Marine base called Camp Foster.  The United States has had troops on Okinawa ever since 1945 when the Japanese were defeated in the Battle of Okinawa by United States forces.  American bases overseas have American schools, so they are very much like schools stateside.  These schools are part of what is called DoDEA--Department of Defense Education Activity.  That agency, DoDEA, oversees all the military schools oversees at all of the US bases.  DoDEA contracts with AdvancED to send in teams of educators to check on how the schools are doing to make sure the students are getting a good education.  The schools in Fremont 1 in Lander are accredited by the same agency.  Jill and I are the leaders of the team to visit Kubasaki High School

Okinawa was not always part of Japan.  Okinawa was taken over by Japan and then later by the United States during World War II.  Now Okinawa is part of Japan, but the United States has a very large number of troops stationed there.

I am posting this from Denver International Airport (DIA).  We flew here from Casper, and now we have a 12-hour flight to Tokyo.  Then we switch airplanes for a three-hour flight to Okinawa.

I will try to blog regularly while we are gone and share some information about the schools and the country.